Book of Days

The cover star for this month’s Convivio Book of Days Calendar is a freshly-leafed swamp maple that resides outside my family’s home in Boca Raton, Florida. I bought it at a native plant sale probably 15 years ago, a little tree in a little pot. Now it’s much taller than the house. Here, in this strange green land, swamp maples drop their leaves and sprout new ones in a matter of a couple of weeks. This one is donning the fresh new green of spring… or summer, for by traditional reckoning of time, we enter summer with May Day, Beltane, as the calendar shifts from April to May. The month is full of days summery or that conjure the idea of summer.

The calendar is a printable PDF, standard letter size. It’s a fine companion to what you read here on the Convivio Book of Days, and it’s our gift to you each month. Enjoy!

They say April showers bring May flowers, and so this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar features rain as its cover star. This would seem to dictate what the May Book of Days calendar will bring, but we shall see what we shall see. Procrastinator that I am, I rarely create the next month’s calendar until the last day I can.

We come to some interesting days in April. All Fools Day came and went, of course, but next up is Lady Day––the Feast of the Annunciation––and that’s all well and good, but here’s the odd (and perhaps wonderful) thing about Lady Day: In Sweden, where the day is called Vårfrudagen, it is a day to eat waffles. And so tomorrow, the Fourth of April, this year at least, is an excellent day to have waffles for dinner (should you be looking for an excuse for a waffle dinner). We also have St. Mark’s Eve, with its bizarre divinations in the romance department, and Walpurgisnacht or May Eve: the traditional segue to summer. I’ll be in touch as these days approach (including the reasoning behind tomorrow’s waffle suppers). And we’ll see what May brings when it gets here.

Stepping out onto our front porch these days I am met with a purple glow. There is a Florida Lilac vine (Petrea volubilis) growing up the trunk of one palm tree there to the right, and it is quite a year for the Florida Lilac. It is stunning and beautiful and it makes you want to stay put and behold it for just a while before you head off to your day. That’s a wonderful thing.

That same Florida Lilac is the cover star of your March Convivio Book of Days calendar. It is the month of Easter and Purim and of many saints’ days designed to give us breathing room in the austerity of Lent. There was St. David’s Day on the First, and then St. Chad, and now, on the Third, St. Winnal. Do you know the old weather rhyme?

First comes David,
Next comes Chad,
Then comes Winnal,
Roaring mad.

If the weather today is “roaring mad” where you are, now you know why. Blame it on Winnal. So perhaps you had Welsh Cakes for St. David’s Day; later in the month, there are more saints’ days that bring good food: St. Patrick’s Day, of course, but also the lesser known St. Joseph’s Day. Well, lesser known if you are not of Italian descent, and if you are, it may be the other way around. St. Joseph brings Italian pastries that the purists amongst us will eat only once a year, for St. Joseph’s Day. And then there’s St. Urho’s Day, which I never would have known of were it not for the fact that I live in a place that is home to the globe’s second largest population of Finns. I only learnt of St. Urho by going to the local Finlandia Days celebration, which back then was held here at Bryant Park on the lagoon. Somewhere in between the wife-carrying contest and a performance by the accordion orchestra, someone got to talking to me about St. Urho, who drove all the grasshoppers out of Finland… and if you think that sounds a lot like some other saint who drove all the snakes out of Ireland, well, yes, you’d be right.

The stories behind all these good fellows will unfold as the month progresses. It is, as well, the month of springtime by the almanac, and the balance of day and night no matter where we live on this planet. That, too, is a wonderful thing.

Now is the time to order from the Convivio Book of Days Catalog for your Easter celebrating! We have handpainted Pysanki eggs made for us by a family in Russia (the Gussaroffs) and traditional handmade wooden bunnies and paper eggs canisters from Germany––the kind you open up and fill with jelly beans or malted eggs. All these things, straight from my childhood to you. ~ John