The TRUE Sesame Street Zodiac

At 11:04 AM on September 26, 2020, the official Sesame Street posted an image, surely not expecting the pandemonium that it would cause.

The image features 12 of our favorite Sesame Street friends, each labeled with a month of the year and their name. The title explained the purpose simply: “YOUR BIRTH MONTH IS YOUR MUPPET.”

So I looked at it, and I saw that I was Snuffy and my partner was Bert, which kinda works, except I’m clearly Bert and they’re clearly Herry Monster. But, y’know, I’m also vaguely imaginary, so Snuffy was fine enough.

But something was amiss. Something I couldn’t pin down until fellow Tough Pig Shane Keating tweeted that since his birthday is in September, he is a Rosita. And more important than whether or not Shane was bilingual, or best friends with Prairie Dawn, or able to fly… was the fact that Rosita is not a September at all.

Chaos broke out in my apartment. Yelling, screaming, throwing a plastic figure of Chef Gonger across the room. You see, I’m something of an expert in Sesame Street minutiae. And while I don’t blame the social media person at Sesame Workshop who posted this image — they do amazing work and I love everything they send out — we all should know that Rosita’s birthday is December 7.

For those not in-the-know, most of the major Sesame Street Muppets and humans (and some weird oddballs like Sam the Robot and Furnella Furchester) have canonical birthdates, which were recorded in the vintage Sesame Street calendars, issues of Sesame Street Magazine, and books like Sesame Unpaved. Admittedly, there are some inconsistencies, particularly involving good ol’ Zoe, but these have remained fairly consistent for decades.

This particular Twitter image is odd, because most, but not all of the characters correspond to their appropriate birth months. Abby, Slimey, Grover, and Rosita are all on the wrong months, while everyone else is placed correctly. That couldn’t be a coincidence, so it’s weird that it wound up like this.

So all we need to do is move some Muppets around and we’ll be golden, right? Wrong. While this would be accurate to the canon calendar, it may not be accurate to life. Sure, Sherlock Hemlock was born in April, but is he truly an April? Does he truly encapsulate all that April has to offer?

You see, in real life we have calendars to tell the day of our birthday, but we also have ZODIACS to tell the spirit of our birthday. For instance, the fact that I was born on August 10 is meaningless, but the fact that I am a Leo is obviously the most important thing of all, as it tells the world that like a lion, I am proud, outgoing, and capable of eating over 85lbs of meat in a single sitting.

Others have tried to make Sesame Street zodiacs before. I’m a big fan of Twitter user @ellle_em, who has made many fun zodiacs including one all about the Sesame gang. While Elle knows a lot about the zodiac, their post is imperfect, and I’m sure you can guess why. Look at it: Elmo as Aries? Please. Elmo might be cheerful, but Elmo was born in February and Elmo knows it.

So clearly, what we need is a Sesame Street zodiac that is accurate both to the characters’ canonical birthdays and their personality traits. Is this possible? Well, if anyone is tenacious and pedantic enough to figure out, it was going to be someone here at ToughPigs…

Please note: All zodiac traits and descriptions are based on writing on Mytodayshoroscope.com. All images come, as always, from Muppet Wiki.