March is the hinge of the Israeli year: it opens in winter and closes in spring. Rain still falls at the start of it, the clocks jump forward at the end, and in between come the first hot dry days off the desert and the peak of the wildflower season. On the Hebrew calendar it usually spans Adar and Nisan, and in most years Purim falls inside it.
The month of Mars, and the month that used to open the year
March carries the name of Mars, Rome’s god of war, for an entirely practical reason: this is the month in which winter ended, the roads opened and the legions marched out again. Mars himself did not begin as a war god alone; in the older layers of Italic religion he presided over fields and crops too, which made the start of spring his month twice over.
March was also, for centuries, the first month of the Roman year. The evidence is still sitting in plain sight at the other end of the calendar: September, October, November and December mean, in Latin, simply the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth, which is what they were when counting began in March. The names stayed put after the count moved, leaving a two-thousand-year-old mistake that nobody has ever bothered to correct.
March around the world
March is a month of new years. The spring equinox falls on the 20th or 21st, and on that exact day several hundred million people, from Iran across Central Asia, mark Nowruz, the Persian new year: a table laid with seven symbolic items, a house cleaned from end to end, and a small bonfire jumped over on the eve before.
India keeps Holi at roughly the same moment: the spring festival of thrown coloured powder. It is set by the full moon of the month of Phalguna, which is why it often lands within a day or two of Purim: two loud spring festivals of reversal and disguise, with no historical connection whatsoever.
And on 8 March the world marks International Women's Day. The date is not arbitrary: it commemorates the women's strike that broke out in Petrograd on 8 March 1917 by the Gregorian calendar, and pulled a revolution along behind it.
What March weather is like in Israel
March is the least predictable month of the Israeli year. It can hand you a thoroughly wet week followed by a week at 30°C. Tel Aviv averages between about 12°C and 21°C, Jerusalem between roughly 9°C and 17°C, and Eilat is already running from 15°C to 28°C.
This is also when the first sharav days appear: a dry easterly wind off the desert that lifts the temperature by ten degrees or more within hours, strips the humidity out of the air and fills the sky with dust. They last a day or two and then break, usually, and confusingly, in rain.
At the end of March the clocks go forward (in Israel on the Friday night before the last Sunday of the month) and the evening lengthens by an hour overnight. It is also the peak of the flowering season across the whole country, and the month in which most family hikes actually happen.
Jewish dates that fall in March
March usually spans Adar and Nisan, and it is the civil month that carries the noisiest day on the Hebrew calendar:
- Purim (14 Adar): the scroll, the costumes, the parcels of food sent to neighbours and the gifts to the poor. It falls between 24 February and 26 March, and in most years in March. Jerusalem and other walled cities keep it a day later, on 15 Adar, as Shushan Purim.
- The Fast of Esther: a short fast from dawn to nightfall on the day before Purim.
- Rosh Chodesh Nisan: closes March in most years, opening the month the Torah calls the first of the months of the year.
- Passover: almost always falls in April, but in early years the Seder can land as soon as 26 March, pulling the first days of the festival into the end of the month.
Every date of the year in one table: the annual holidays calendar.
Common questions about March
When is Rosh Chodesh in March?
Most years March contains two Hebrew new moons, Adar near the start and Nisan near the end, and either can run for two days. They follow the moon rather than the civil month, so they shift every year; the grid above marks them. This year: Rosh Chodesh Adar II: 11-12/3/35.
Which Hebrew months does March cover?
Usually Adar and Nisan. In a leap year it is Adar II.
How many days are in March?
Thirty-one.
When is Purim?
On 14 Adar, which falls between late February and late March; this year it falls on 25/3/35 (Sunday). The Purim page has the exact date and times.
When do the clocks change in Israel?
Israeli summer time begins on the Friday night before the last Sunday in March, when clocks go forward an hour, and runs until the end of October.
Printing a March calendar
The grid at the top of this page shows March whole, from the 1st to the 31st: the civil date and the matching Hebrew date in every cell, alongside the Sabbaths and their Torah portions and every festival falling in the month, Purim and its surrounding days included. The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape.
- Every date of the year with its own page: the annual holidays calendar
- The full printable year: home page
- For a Hebrew-month view, in which Adar and Nisan each appear whole: Hebrew month calendar