Category Archives: Book of Days Calendar

Jan 02 2016
Book of Days Calendar

Your January Book of Days

Live

The turning of the year is always a welcome time for good advice, and our advice to you this year was found scrawled on a park bench along the Lake Worth Lagoon in West Palm Beach. The graffiti didn’t last long, but before it was cleaned up I did manage to capture it so I could always remember the message. In the busy-ness of life, it is, after all, something we often forget. Let’s not.

The bench and its message are this month’s cover stars for the Convivio Book of Days calendar for January. The Book of Days calendars began way back in 2003, and this blog, simply an extension of those calendars. The calendar is free, a printable PDF document that you can print out on standard US letter size paper and pin to your bulletin board, or just download to keep on your desktop. It’s a good companion to the blog, the two informing each other. Download away!

 

Dec 03 2015
Book of Days Calendar

Your December Book of Days

December Field

December now is here, carrying with it so many red letter days. There are the ones we all know, of course, but there are many lesser ones, like Santa Lucia’s Day on the 13th and St. Nicholas’ Eve on the 5th, not to mention the Twelve Days of Christmas that come on the heels of Christmas Day itself. Half of them are in the old year, half in the new, and this alone can be counted as one of the beautiful mysteries of the season, which stands outside of ordinary time. It is a month of gift bearers and light bearers in a time of wintry darkness.

And so it is a complex month, December. To help make it as meaningful as possible, here is your December Book of Days calendar. It is a printable PDF document, designed for standard US letter size paper. Print it and follow along as the Book of Days blog chapters are published.

The cover star this month is a snowy field, the front yard at my Aunt Anne’s house in Palos Park, Illinois, where Seth and I and the rest of my family gathered to spend Thanksgiving. The increasing darkness on the approach to Midwinter is much more noticeable in a northern place, and we had many snowy days there, as well. The scene above is what we awoke to on our first morning there. The snow was falling still late that same afternoon, and if you look closely (perhaps not even very closely) you can see the snowflakes that landed on my camera lens. The magic of a snowy field becomes quite apparent when you’re standing in its midst.

 

Nov 01 2015
Book of Days Calendar, Day of the Dead, Halloween

Your November Book of Days

Nov15 Pumpkin

Hallowe’en has past and now it is November. It is also All Hallows, the day that gives All Hallow’s Eve, or Hallowe’en, its name. All Hallows, better known these days as All Saints Day. Tomorrow, All Souls: Dia de Muertos in the Mexican tradition, I Morti in the Italian tradition, an idea spanning cultures and places: honoring the dead on these autumnal days that lead us toward winter and gathering in.

And here is your November Book of Days calendar. You’ll notice that these days where we particularly remember those who have come and gone before us carry on all the way through Martinmas, the 11th of November. When we speak of the sacredness of Hallowe’en, it is in this context. I can recall when I was in college being in a class on American Indian literature, and the professor, who was not Native American, went on and on about sacred traditions, sacred ways. But when I protested over his scheduling of an exam on Hallowe’en night, he scoffed at me. And I wondered how he could teach the sacredness of one culture’s traditions when he couldn’t even recognize the sacred roots of his own. I took his exam that Hallowe’en night as fast as I could, aced it even, and then got out of there and connected with the folks at home who were waiting for me to celebrate with them.

And so we gather in, we remember, we celebrate. November begins this way and as the month continues darkness grows, for we are fast approaching Midwinter and the darkest nights of the year. The month concludes with our day of thanks and with the start of advent, as we begin to call back the light. It’s a beautiful month to be on this earth, and a beautiful month to honor those who have moved on to other shores.

 

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