Persephone and Demeter
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| "Can't we ever watch anything besides golf?" |
So anyhow, one day the goddess of Nature, Demeter (rhymes with trimeter) and her daughter Persephone (rhymes with telephony) are out walking around, and who should pop out of the ground, but Hades (rhymes with Slim Shady’s).
Hades grabs Persephone and takes her down to… well… Hades.
The god and the place are sort of the same thing, like with
Trump Towers.
Demeter was pretty flummoxed, I can tell you.
Zeus was pulling stunts like this all the time, so you would have expected it from Zeus, but Hades usually kept to himself, so this was something new.
But Hades had an impulsive side people didn’t know about.
His motto was, “What the hell?”
So Demeter starts grieving over her lost daughter, and nature begins to die: leaves fall from the trees, the birds stop singing, pigeons won’t eat popcorn, the works.
The other gods are pretty upset about this, because if everyone dies, it’s like, who’s going to worship us?
So they sent down the messenger god Hermes (rhymes with Burmese) to get her back, which he did, only there was one small thing.
While she was down there, Hades offered her something to eat.
She was all like, “No, I’m full really,” and he was like, “Just a little something.
You’re practically skin and bones.”
And she relented and ate six pomegranate seeds.
1 So for every seed she ate, she has to spend a month with Hades to be his wife, even though there wasn’t any warning on the package or she didn’t sign anything to that effect, and when she’s gone, Demeter goes into mourning all over again, which is why the weather is so crummy in winter.
2
1. In the old days it was only five. Someone added two months to the calendar.
2. We still don't have an explanation for August.
