A long, long time ago, Moru, the god of learning and education, sat in his hut on Mount Olympus with his godly laptop on his lap. And he decided that men needed to learn. He decided that they should learn about all the scientific aspects of life at an early age, so that they have the rest of their life to implement their skills. And he planned out all the details of education and how it should be done, and he typed everything on his laptop.
When he finished all his plans, he decided that the best way to tell this to man was to send his Angel secretary down to Earth to tell the people all he came up with, because the secretary had already read and reviewed all his work, and knew it like the back of his hand. He journeyed down from Mount Olympus, and came to the Council of Philosophers which was organised in Greece at the time. He appeared as a large bronze sword superimposed on a partially unfurled scroll, and as he spoke, he portrayed his thoughts on the scroll in heavenly ink, and the philosophers were overjoyed to receive such revelations from the god of learning and education.
However, back on Mount Olympus, Moru had made a fatal flaw in his plans. He realised that since human children are not gods, they cannot possibly be able to stay in school all year round, and still be able to learn well. He realized that he needed to give them some time to lay back and relax and idle in parks, and he decided that the best time to give studends a very long break would be in the winter. They would not be overburdened with work by their parents as soon as they came home from school, because in winter, there is barely any work to do, and they would also be able to rejuvenate quickly and get back to studying much more readily.
But, alas, his Angel was already on Earth explaining his plans to the philosophers, and all the other Angels were running errands for all the other gods of earthly and heavenly things. So Moru made himself a Plan B, because he was very clever and good at planning. He decided that if he cannot send an Angel, he would send the wisest animal in all the world to explain. The wisest animal was Sophia, a beautiful red, orange, and green snake whose back was laid out with valuable gems and her sapphire eyes twinkled in the sun with such ancient knowledge as no Angel secretary could imagine.
Moru enlightened Sophia with his plans, and sent her down with the sacred Water of Translation contained in a phial of pure diamond to translate her snake dialect into Greek. Sophia met the exhausted Angel on her way to Greece, and with his last strength, the Angel pinpointed to her the location of the house of the Council of Philosophers. She entered, and found the philosophers discussing the new plan with much rigor and excitement, and called their attention to herself. She opened the phial, and drank the potion, and began to explain the plans. However, as she was getting to the thesis of her speech, the potency of the Water of Translation began to falter, and where she thought to tell them to make the long break in winter, it came out of her mouth seeming like she wanted them to make it in the summer, and this wrong version seemed plausible to the philosophers. She left the diamond phial with the Greeks, and went back to Moru, and explained what had happened. Moru was greatly displeased.
He sent his secretary Angel once more to the council, and he spoke to them in his new strength of the true plan. However, as the philosophers listened to this correctional revelation, the diamond phial began to glow ever so brightly, and shattered in a million pieces; the form of the Angel began to distort into a flaming trident of doom. The frightened philosophers took out their magical staffs, and banished the Angel from their gathering place, and did not believe a word he had said.
Thus, the long break in our scholarly schedule remains in the summer, rather than the winter as Moru had originally planned. And to revere the god and his messenger snake, Sophia, they called the graduating class (10th grade at the time) in their combined name—Sophia-Moru, or Sophomores.
