Book of Days

It’s a new month and a new year, and here’s your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for January 2015. Like Janus, the Roman god that gives January its name, we do a lot of looking back and looking ahead in January. We’ve been celebrating Christmas and midwinter since the end of December, but we begin January with New Year’s Day and the second half of the Twelve Days of Christmas. And at the end of the month, we get to sing “Auld Lang Syne,” which many of us sang on New Year’s Eve, all over again, for it is Burns’ Night on the 25th, celebrating the great Scottish poet Robert Burns, who penned that song we know so well.

There is some question in my head each year about St. Distaff’s Day. I have some sources that list the day as a moveable holiday, while other sources––sources I put more faith in––set it at January 7 each year. St. Distaff is one of the folk saints; not a real one based on the life of a real person. St. Distaff’s Day, rather, is part of the series of little known but important celebratory January holidays that ease us back into ordinary time once Christmastide has passed after January 6. St. Distaff’s Day marks the day that women went back to their household tasks, especially spinning. Soon after comes Plough Monday, when the men returned to work on the farms, and Copperman’s Day, a big day for us printers.

We wish you the very best for this new year. A thousand blessings upon you and those you love. Wes Hel!

And now it is December, last of the Ember Months. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the month of the Winter Solstice, Midwinter by traditional reckoning of time. At some point during the course of this season, I suspect I will find myself gathered into a dark church and if all goes well, one of the songs we will sing together, as a congregation, will be “In the Bleak Midwinter.” I love this song. Especially the first verse:

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter
Long ago.

The words are based on a poem by Christina Rosetti and they are perfect as they are. And while all this cold hardness may be happening outside, inside it’s a different story. These are the days of our greatest annual celebrations. The harvest is in, the bounty is evident. The night is long and dark but the fire is warm and we are gathered together in that warmth of home. The celebrations we keep are ancient ones that go back farther than anyone can remember, but we keep them well, remembering those who kept them before us and hoping those who follow will take them up, as well, and pass them along to those who follow them. Dickens’ Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future visit each of us in their way.

The monthly Convivio Book of Days calendar is a printable PDF document, and if you do choose to print it and pin it to your bulletin board, this month you get to spend time with some good folks I know. The cover stars on your December Book of Days calendar are my mom, Millie (she makes Millie’s Potholders in our catalog) and my cousin Larry, standing at Aunt Mary’s and Uncle Phil’s Christmas tree, 1952. That would have been in Brooklyn, New York, and it’s a safe bet that there was good food on the table that night, things we make only once a year, at Christmastime. The same good things we make now; the same good things those who came before were making, too. This is one of the best things about this time of year: the bleak midwinter brings out the best in us.

A cold front came through yesterday afternoon, just before the Hallowe’en festivities began, and today it is autumnal perfection outside, Florida style. It’s cool, clear, breezy: a wonderful way to welcome November. We are expecting record lows tonight in Lake Worth, down into the 40s. For the Celts, this time of year was known as Samhain and it marked the beginning of winter and of a new year. Our cold front, it would seem, knows a thing or two about good timing.

People love to hate November. British poet Thomas Hood had this much to say about November:

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon ––
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member ––
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds ––
November!

Of course it was 1844 and our poet was writing in a smoggy, cold London. Here in Lake Worth, November brings sunlight in a very particular slant that streams through the windows onto the oak floor and into the print shop and makes Haden, our shop cat, positively drunk on the stuff. She basks in that sunlight, sprawled out to soak in as much of it as she can, and if you go up to her and speak her name or snuzzle your nose into her ears, she looks back at you in a stupor. Haden will tell you: November here is pretty amazing.

To celebrate this wonderful month, we deliver to you today a gift: the November Book of Days calendar from Convivio Bookworks. It’s a printable PDF document so you can print it out and pin it to a bulletin board, should you wish.

You’ll find today is All Saints Day, All Hallows… the day that gives last night’s Halloween celebration its name, and tomorrow brings All Souls Day, or Dia de Muertos, Day of the Dead. What with all the traditional handmade Day of the Dead items we sell at our website, you know it’s a day we love. We’ll be celebrating with family tomorrow, eating pan de muertos and perhaps drinking bone punch, and I’ll include you in that festivity, too. So.. see you here at the Book of Days Blog tomorrow? Good.