Category Archives: Book of Days Calendar

Oct 05 2023
6 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Day of the Dead, Halloween

Snap-Apple Night, or Your October Book of Days

Now it is October and I am writing from one of my favorite places: Maine. It’s a lovely foggy morning and the leaves are still green but many are red and orange and golden, too; the swamp maples in particular are shimmering red and the aspens are quaking in the breeze. Seth is reading in a window seat next to the piano that our niece is playing (Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor) and me, I am here with you, in long sleeves and a cardigan, letting you know, finally, that your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for October awaits you. It is, as usual, a printable PDF that you may print and pin to your bulletin board or bookmark digitally for reference throughout this autumnal month. It is a perfect companion to this blog.

I have not written much lately, I know. To be honest, Seth and I have not yet figured out how to escape our sadness over Haden’s passing, and I’ve just not had it in me to write. But I am writing to you now, and the setting––the people, the music, the weather––is ideal. We have just a few days here before the hustle and hubbub of Oktoberfest Miami begins, but while we’re here, we’ll visit with family, visit with friends, maybe visit the Fryeburg Fair. We will pick apples at Thompson Orchard (I think that’s later today) and we will go to Sunday Meeting at Chosen Land, the Shaker Community in neighboring New Gloucester, to sing and pray and visit with our old friends there: Brother Arnold and Sister June and all the friends they welcome in each Sunday.

The change of scenery, we figure, will do us a world of good. Your Book of Days Calendar for this month focuses on the last night of October, which brings one of my very favorite nights of the year: Hallowe’en. My idea of an excellent Hallowe’en celebration is a bit vintage and perhaps archaic. I do not go in for all this blood and gore and chainsaw horror stuff that is a more recent addition to Hallowe’en lore. No, I have always been more interested in jack o’ lanterns and All Hallow’s Eve barn dances and games involving apples and gently ghostly stories and divination and our October cover star is a painting that depicts my kind of Hallowe’en festivity: it’s a painting called “Snap-Apple Night.” The Irish painter Daniel Maclise painted the scene in 1833, and said it was inspired by a Hallowe’en party he had attended in Blarney, Ireland, the year prior. Here’s the caption he included in the exhibition catalog, the first time the painting was exhibited:

There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the Cards could Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She’d missed the snap-apple turning.

The scene covers many of the All Hallow’s Eve customs of the day: romantic divination based upon pouring molten lead into water and tossing nuts into the fire, bobbing for apples and other apple games, and, most certainly, the telling of ghost stories. It looks to me like a grand old time. If you, like me, ever feel like you’d have done well living in the early 1800s, this may be your kind of party, too. In case you missed it earlier, CLICK HERE for the calendar. And do enjoy.

 

COME SEE US!
Our busy season begins pretty much as soon as we get back home to Lake Worth, and we hope you’ll come see us at our pop-up shops at these upcoming events in South Florida.

OKTOBERFEST MIAMI
We’re celebrating Oktoberfest this year with our friends at the German American Social Club in Miami’s horse country for two long weekends this month: Friday October 13 through Sunday October 15 and again the following weekend, Friday October 20 through Sunday October 22. You must purchase tickets in advance: CLICK HERE for full details and tickets. It is Florida’s original and longest-running Oktoberfest celebration. You’ll find our Convivio Bookworks shop inside the clubhouse (air conditioned comfort!) and we’ll have a huge shop there with all our German handicrafts and specialty foods: handmade nutcrackers, incense smokers, pyramids, and ornaments, plus vintage Hallowe’en German papier mache pieces, and some of our German springtime collection, too (since we rarely get to show the German bunnies and eggs in person). Specialty foods include candies and cookies that have just arrived from Germany, plus more new arrivals from Sweden and my sister, while we were traveling yesterday, was busy pricing all the new Shaker culinary herbs and herbal teas that arrived just before we left for Maine, so all our herbs and teas are as fresh as they can be. My mom’s Millie’s Tea Towels will be there, too. Oktoberfest Miami will be a wonderful time and gosh, we’d love to see you there!

DIA de LOS MUERTOS LAKE WORTH
On Saturday October 28, from 3 to 9 PM, we’ll be at Lake Worth’s annual Dia de Los Muertos celebration with a pop-up shop of traditional artesanías méxicanas: handicrafts from Mexico. This free community celebration begins at City Hall on Dixie Highway between Lake Avenue and Lucerne Avenue with face painting and music and then there is a procession to the community arts center, Hatch 1121, which is where you’ll find our pop-up shop outdoors in the courtyard. Jose Mendez, the organizer of this wonderful community event, let us build an ofrenda in honor of Haden before we left. Please visit all the ofrendas that are in the gallery at Hatch, enjoy the mariachi and marimba bands, and be sure to say hola to us. Hatch 1121 is at 1121 Lucerne Avenue in Lake Worth Beach.

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD
Lake Worth’s celebration is on Saturday October 28 but the big Florida Day of the Dead celebration in Fort Lauderdale comes one week later, on Saturday November 4. We’re not quite sure where things begin this year. Usually they begin at Huizenga Plaza, 32 East Las Olas Boulevard, but we’ve heard things may begin this year at Esplanade Park, which is nearby at 400 SW 2nd Street. Both are nearby each other, and it should be pretty obvious that day where the festivities are. Wherever it begins, you’ll find the Convivio Bookworks tent filled with traditional artesanías méxicanas: handicrafts from Mexico, from 3 to 7 PM. We’ll be there until after the Skeleton Procession departs and heads to the second half of the celebration, which continues into the night.

Sorry to report we will not be at the Oktoberfest celebration at the American German Club in Lake Worth this year… but we will be there with our biggest pop-up shop ever for Krampusnacht on Friday evening, December 8, followed by their lovely Christkindlmarkt that weekend, December 9 & 10. We’ll have other Christmas markets to tell you about, too, in Miami and in Boca Raton and in Delray Beach.

Until Oktoberfest, we wish you all good things from Maine.
John & Seth

 

Image: “Snap-Apple Night, or On the Festival of Hallow Eve” by Daniel Maclise. Oil on canvas, 1833. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Sep 01 2023
2 Comments
Autumn, Book of Days Calendar, Harvest, Nativity of Mary

A Symphony of Bells, or Your September Book of Days

In the previous chapter of the Convivio Book of Days, the one about the Bartlemas Wayzgoose, I gave brief mention to the fact that the printers’ Wayzgoose festivities that come out of St. Bartholomew’s Day on the 24th of August are rooted in an acknowledgment of the waning days of summer giving way to fall. I know many of you were not keen on hearing that, and yet today we have a deeper acknowledgment of the turning of the wheel of the year, for it is now September, and once we get to these Ember Months, which is what I like to call these last few months of the year, since they all end with -ember, save for October (and even October ends in something much like -ember)… well, once we get to these Ember Months, there is no denying that summer’s days are few indeed and autumn will soon be made welcome: welcome or welcome not.

In the Swiss Alps, the cows who wear such distinctive sounding bells around their necks have been up in the mountain meadows all summer long, but come the Feast of the Nativity of Mary on the 8th of this month, they will begin their journey down to the valleys in a centuries-old cattle drive known as the Almabtrieb. The feast day, also called Our Lady of the Grape Harvest, for vintners are now beginning to harvest grapes and make wine, is also known as Drive Down Day, and the driving down is done with great ceremony as the cows are decorated with flowers and greenery and beautifully woven textiles and yes, there is a symphony of bells as they walk and lumber their way alongside their humans down the roads, down to their winter quarters in the farms and villages of the valleys.

Seth and I were in the Swiss Alps in 2019. Not for Drive Down Day––we were passing through in July, in the Alpine grass-grazing season of high summer, on our way from Austria to Lake Como in Italy. Seth was at the wheel and at one point he made a right turn off the main road and me, I thought we were stopping for ice cream, but no, he kept driving into the woods and suddenly we were ascending up and up and there we were, driving along a switchback two-lane road up into the mountains. We were on the Splügenpass. (That’s what it’s called on the German speaking side of Switzerland, and as you descend down toward the Italian speaking side, it’s called the Passo del Spluga.) I had no idea this would be happening, and instead of ice cream, I got to enjoy the most spectacular vistas. Every now and then, we had to pull over and stop and just take it all in. And what enchanted me most was the sound of bells. Each bell came from a single cow, grazing the green mountain meadow grass. A beautiful sound in complete harmony with the mountain we stood upon. I could listen to Swiss cows grazing all day long and never grow tired of it.

All this to say: Now it is September, and here is your Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month. It is, as usual, a printable PDF that you may print out and pin to your bulletin board or stick to your refrigerator or prop up on your desk, or just keep it handy digitally. It’s a fine companion to this blog and will give you more holidays than I will have time to write about… but even if I don’t write about them, you might find something about each of them if you do a search for each particular day on the blog page. Cover star this month: one of those lovely cows, dressed to the nines, at rest in a grassy field on Drive Down Day. Aside from Almabtrieb beginning on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, it’s also the month of several important holidays in the Jewish calendar, and of Johnny Appleseed’s birthday (his 249th!), as well as Letterpress Appreciation Day on 9/18 and, of course, the autumnal equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere. CLICK HERE for the calendar.

COME SEE US!
Thanks to all who came to shop at the Wayzgoose last Sunday at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Now, pop-up market season is beginning in earnest! Here are a few of the markets we plan to attend in the coming months:

OKTOBERFEST MIAMI at the German American Social Club west of Miami. Two weekends: Friday October 13 through Sunday October 15 and then again the following weekend: Friday October 20 through Sunday October 22.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS LAKE WORTH BEACH at our hometown community art center, Hatch 1121, just west of the tracks between Lucerne Avenue and Lake Avenue (just west of City Hall). Saturday October 28 from 3 to 9 PM.

FLORIDA DAY OF THE DEAD in Downtown Fort Lauderdale on Saturday November 4. The Convivio Bookworks tent is usually at the gathering point for the procession, which is Huzienga Plaza (or Bubier Park), 32 East Las Olas Boulevard. Details still to come, but we are usually there from about 3:00 until the procession leaves to cross the New River.

You may also expect to find us at the German American Social Club’s Christmas Market in Miami on Saturday December 2, the Sankta Lucia Julmarknad in Boca Raton also on Saturday December 2, and the American German Club in suburban Lake Worth for their Krampusnacht celebration on Friday night, December 8, followed by their Christkindlmarkt on Saturday & Sunday, December 9 & 10…. and perhaps more than this.

 

Image: A cow dressed up for Almabtrieb, photographed by Evelyscher, 2014. [Creative Commons] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Aug 01 2023
2 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Lammas

Two Moons, & Lammas

August this year brings two full moons: one tonight, this First of August, which is called the Sturgeon Moon, and the second, a Blue Moon, at the end of the month on the 30th. Both are super moons––full moons that coincide with perigee, which is when the Moon is in closest proximity to the Earth in its elliptical orbit. Both full moons of August will appear larger than usual, because the Moon is indeed closer to us than it usually is. All of this Moon Magic inspired me to give you a moon-focused Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month of August. Cover star: “Summer Night Moon” by Eero Järnefelt. Click here for your free calendar: it is, as usual, a printable PDF, and a fine companion to this Book of Days.

This Sturgeon Moon happens to illuminate an ancient agrarian celebration called Lammas, which falls each First of August. It is one of the old cross quarter days that fall between the solstices and equinoxes, and with Lammas we come to the midpoint between the June solstice and the September equinox. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is high summer, but with Lammas comes the acknowledgment of a perspective shift and the understanding that summer’s growth is mostly done and the focus of the things of this world begins to shift now toward ripening, and harvest and gathering.

Indeed, Lammas is the celebration of the first grain harvest. Where Lammas is well celebrated and where it was more widely acknowledged in our agrarian past, this was a time to bake loaves of bread from the new grain. One loaf would be brought to church to be blessed, and some loaves would be shaped into ornamental loaves called corn dollies, “corn” being a general word describing grain (and not necessarily the cornmeal Americans might think of upon hearing the word). Translating these traditions to the contemporary world, it is a very good day, I think, to bake a crusty loaf, or to gather one from your local baker, and to savor each delectable crumb. You might take a wee dram, as well, of whisky: one of the other gifts of grain. The bread is acknowledged in the very name of Lammas, which descends from the Old English hlafmaesse, or “loaf mass.” John Barleycorn is a name you may hear this time of summer: he is the grain, personified. As the old song goes, John Barleycorn must die: Summer is waning, autumn is coming, and with Lammas, as summer’s hues begin to shift from green to golden, we begin to turn our thoughts toward gathering in. John Barleycorn brings a bit of melancholy but a bit of warmth as well––warmth in his crusty bread, warmth in his spirits, warmth in the ones we gather with to celebrate. Happy Lammastide.

 

SUMMER HIGH FIVE SALE!
At our online shop, enjoy $5 off your order of $35 or more when you use discount code HIGH5 at checkout. Take it to $75 and you’ll earn free domestic shipping, too. Use the deal on anything in the shop. Click here to shop! Years ago, when I was a printing intern at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine, I wrote a short summery tale called Sturgeon Moon. It was August, and the well was running dry. Before I left the Shakers to go back to grad school, I printed the story from handset type in Brother Arnold’s printshop and made it into a miniature book that is illustrated with a pop-up sheep flying over a barn. You can even use the HIGH5 discount code for $5 off the book!

Top Image: “Summer Night Moon” by Eero Järenefelt. Oil on canvas, 1889. Kansallisgalleria (Finnish National Gallery). [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. Bottom image: My mom, Millie, in a fishing boat on a lake in Brooklyn, circa 1950.

 

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