Dark Lord's Birthday (was some questions

[Talisman]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at m...> 
wrote:

> Snow wrote: 
> > We are all aware that Harry has the same birth date as his creator, 
> which I
> > always contributed to the fact that this is her story but why was 
> Voldemort
> > born the day her mother died?
> 
> 
> Kathy W:
> Good catch. Chilling though. Well, erm, do we know which came first?  
One heck of a coincidence if she'd already set the date. 

Talisman:

Rowling's site *Biography* gives December 30, 1990 as her mother's 
death date. In HBP, Mrs. Cole tells DD that Merope came to her door on 
a bitter cold New Year's Eve night, and gave birth about an hour later 
(266).

Of course New Year's Eve is December 31st, not December 30th.  

We don't have an exact time, but due to the fact that it was already 
*night* when Merope arrived, plus an additional hour of labor, it's 
reasonable to conclude that the baby who would one day become Voldemort 
was born somewhere in the range of midnight.

This is consistent with received literary symbolism: Winter is the 
season of death, and here we have babyvolde emerging in the *death 
throes* of the calendar year.

It is also consistent with an association with Janus, the two-faced god 
of beginnings and endings.

We saw this image in the first book with Quirrellmort, and, as I've 
said long ago, I fully expect to see this image recur in the final book.


So, yes, I think there are independent reasons for our author to select 
this date for young Riddle's birthday.

She had been writing her book for some time before her mother died, 
and, given her education and interest in drawing from Classical 
mythology,  it's not hard to believe that she had already chosen a 
Janus association to begin and end the series.  

This alone would indicate using Dec. 31 / Jan.1 as the date of 
association.

Couple that with the fact that the dates aren't exact, and that, 
statistically speaking, the holiday season enjoys a higher than usual 
death rate (including people dying from long term disease), and perhaps 
its not too great a coincidence.

Of course she may have added it all after her mother's death. There is 
a certain symbolic felicity in connecting *death of mother* with *birth 
of Voldemort,* whether you read his name as *flight from death* or 
*flying death.*

In the end, there is no way to determine the exact time these details 
entered her plan, at least from extant books and interviews.

Perhaps in the long days after Book 7, if she allows us to keep picking 
her brain...

Talisman