Appreciate A Dragon Day

What the day is

Appreciate A Dragon Day is observed on January 16. It was created in 2004 by the author Donita K. Paul to mark a fantasy novel, and it outgrew the promotion.

Origin and background

What makes dragons interesting is that they are not one creature. Cultures with no contact invented serpentine beasts of great power independently, and the versions differ in ways that reveal what each was for.

The European dragon is an adversary: hoarding, fire-breathing, winged, and reliably killed by a hero. It functions as an obstacle and a test. The Chinese long is close to the opposite, a wingless, benevolent being associated with water, rivers and rain, and so with agriculture and imperial authority rather than with menace. Mesoamerican traditions have feathered serpents. Both the hostile and the auspicious versions are ancient, and neither derives from the other.

Where the common idea came from has been argued for a long time. One suggestion is that unearthed fossils prompted explanations, and this is documented at least once: the remains of large prehistoric animals in China were recorded as dragon bones for centuries and sold as medicine, which is how some fossils were preserved at all. A simpler proposal is that the composite parts, snake, big cat, bird of prey, correspond to the things that actually preyed on early humans.

The fire is comparatively recent and mostly European, becoming standard in the medieval period rather than at the beginning.

How to take part

• Read a dragon story from a tradition you do not know, which will not match your expectations.
• Look at a Chinese dragon properly and count the absent wings.
• Visit a museum with large fossil reptiles and consider what they would suggest to someone without geology.
• Draw one. Everybody can, which is itself telling.
• Read about dragon bones sold as Chinese medicine and what paleontologists found in the shops.