Summer

£2.40

A humorous greeting card featuring two swallows flying close to one another and a speech bubble with one of the swallows saying ‘Is It Summer Yet?’

– Blank inside for your own message
– Printed in the UK on premium card stock
– Supplied with a white envelope

In stock

SKU: C0352 Category:

Description

Summer

Is it summer yet, as one swallow says to its companion in this humorous greeting card. It features two swallows flying together and a speech bubble. The speech bubble is one of the swallows asking the other Is it summer yet?

The question is of course a play on the well-known phrase that one swallow does not make a summer. The phrase refers to the fact that summer cannot be taken to have arrived merely by observing one swallow. That is, one swallow that has returned from its migration. But here we have two swallows, so there is a chance that summer has arrived. That makes sense, and is the basis of the joke.

The inbound migration from sub-Saharan Africa heralds something, but does it herald summer?

The thing is that the migration begins in the UK much earlier than that, with swallows arriving in the UK in April and May.

So how did the phrase even come to be, given that no one would think that summer had arrived if they saw a swallow in April?

Aristotle And His Philosophy

The origin of the phrase might explain it. It is attributed to Aristotle, who is reputed to have said that:

One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

Aristole lived three hundred years before the common era. So perhaps in his day in Ancient Greece the seasons were different. And if the seasons were different then perhaps the the migrations were different. Therefore, perhaps, swallows arrived at the beginning of summer.

And what of Aristotle? What is he saying in this quotation? He belonged to a school of philosophy that tied understanding to outcomes. As he might have said, a morality that does not take into account the outcome of following it, is no guide at all. Happy communities and happy children are a better pointer to moral philosophical points of view than any preconceived logic.

SKU: C0352

Humorous Summer Greeting Card featuring two swallows flying close to one another and a speech bubble with one of the swallows saying 'Is It Summer Yet?'
Summer
£2.40