Good Morning. Today is the 28th Day of the Month of Nivose in the Year of Our Revolution 218.

..or 28 Nivose CCXVIII apres the dead revolutionaries.

The saint whose feast day was replaced today was TAKE YOUR PICK:

January 18

St. Ammonius
St. Archelais and Companions
St. Volusian
St. Ulfrid
St. Vincenza Mary Lopez y Vicuna
St. Day
St. Deicola
St. Fazzio
St. Leobard
St. Liberata
St. Moseus & Ammonius,

and (he, she or they) was/were replaced by the useful element zinc on the French Republican Calendar.

There was a real bad mixup with the two guys named Ammonius.

Here, let Wiki explain this embarrassing theological contretemps:

Ammonius of Alexandria was a Christian philosopher who lived in the 3rd century. He is not to be confused with Ammonius Saccas, the Neoplatonist philosopher, also from Alexandria.

Until the 19th century Ammonius was credited with devising the early medieval divisions of the text of the Four Gospels, still usually known as the Ammonian Sections. These are now usually ascribed to Eusebius of Caesarea instead. Eusebius (Church History, vi. 19), who is followed by Jerome, asserts that Ammonius was born a Christian, remained faithful to Christianity throughout his life, and produced two works, The Harmony of Moses and Jesus and a Diatessaron, or The Harmony of the Four Gospels. There is an extant Latin translation by the sixth century bishop Victor of Capua of an anonymous Diatessaron, it is generally ascribed it to Tatian, but it could have been written by Ammonius.

Eusebius attacks Porphyry for saying that Ammonius apostatized early in his life and left no writings behind him, but Eusebius was presumably confusing Ammonius with the Neoplatonist.

"Will the real Ammonius please stand up, please stand up?"

Well, even if you worship the wrong guy, he was a Neoplatonist, and that's pretty darn close to Christianity.

Christianity can work with Neoplatonists.

Zinc is also the French word for zinc.

If you know French, you know this also means "bar counter" in French, since presumably they used to be made out of zinc. Kindly remove your teeth from le zinc. I guess they still are. Made of zinc. I wouldn't know. I haven't been in many bars in France lately.

I stopped drinking long ago.

How do you say teetotaler in French? That's easy: cauchemar.

Please try to meditate upon the holiness of zinc today.

I used to like to employ it in my chemistry set as a young one, to liberate hydrogen.

Little bubbles would begin to form and float upwards to the top of the stoppered tube.

And then I would remove the cork and light the test tube on fire and it would go POP!!

Of course, I imagined making LOTS of hydrogen and doing something bad.

But I didn't do it.

Yesterday, I misinformed you.

Yesterday's element sacred to the Revolution was actually Plomb (Lead) and not Sel (Salt).

Yesterday actually felt like a leaden day.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry you believed me.

You're on a blog.

What do you expect?

Illustrations: Can you tell your Eusebius from your Ammonius? If you guessed the dead guy on the right instead of the dead guy on the left, give yourself an extra Communion wafer today! And that is zinc on the right. Which do you find sexier? Zinc or Ammonius?