Lucky Brits get two days holiday at the end of this week. One is the normal bank holiday, which is usually the last Monday in May, but has been moved to the end of the week. The other is a special day to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee, as she will have been on the throne for a remarkable seventy years.
Already many streets have the red white and blue bunting up, street and park parties are in hand for the weekend, and parades and pageants will take place in London on several days. Watch out for the corgis and swans on parade on Sunday – they are the creation of a particular friend of mine.
The origin of the word jubilee is a little left field. It comes from the Hebrew yohbel: a ram’s horn. Apparently, once every fifty years in Old Testament times, land would be left uncultivated for a year, alienated property would be restored to the rightful owner, and Hebrew slaves would be liberated. The start to this significant year would be heralded by the blowing of a ram’s horn.
No doubt the sense of liberation after forty-nine years of hard labour was seen as a cause for celebration, as the Latinised version of yohbel – jubilare (to shout for joy) – suggests. No big jump then to go from blowing the horn to signify the national easing of daily toil, to seeing the ensuing free time as a significant cause for jubilation. Time for a jubilee in fact.
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