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.