Nov 02 2014
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Day of the Dead

Calaveras Dance

Calaveras

Hallowe’en is but the beginning of festivities that are powerful, celebratory connections to those who have come and gone before us. That first special night is followed by All Saints Day on the First of November and then today, the Second, brings us the day we celebrate everyone else, saint or not: All Souls Day, or Day of the Dead, Dia de Muertos. It is the homier of the two sacred days, more familial: All Saints Day has always seemed to me more of a formal church holiday, but Dia de Muertos is more about home, with good food, as well as music and games. Naturally, this is the day we like best of the two.

The celebrations in Mexico, where Dia de Muertos is a very big deal, can be very grand indeed, but most are just like one we will have: a small gathering, just amongst family, with a celebratory meal. We will eat, we will laugh, we will play loteria and laugh some more and we will eat some more and we will remember all of the folks who are there in spirit if not in person. It is celebrations like these that help us keep those loved ones with us, even long after they are gone. This is powerful magic, and so easily conjured. And this is what lies at the heart of these days we love so much. Death is there for every one of us. And if there is a seat for death set at every festive gathering, this, certainly, is the gathering and the day when we can laugh most heartily at it. Look closely at any of the traditional Mexican handcrafts we sell for Dia de Muertos, or at the woodcuts of José Guadalupe Posada that inspire them, and this becomes clear. Death is but a part of life. If we embrace it, if we do not not talk about it, it becomes less frightening. We gain some control over its power. And we keep the channels open across the ages.

 

Image: Calaveras from our Convivio Book of Days Catalog for Dia de Muertos.

 

 

Nov 01 2014
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Book of Days Calendar

Your November Book of Days

Nov14

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.

 

 

Oct 31 2014
3 Comments
Halloween

This is Halloween

Lanterns

Tonight’s setting sun brings us Halloween. We celebrate all day, of course––folks in costume at work, parades of costumed children in elementary schools––but really it is the night that belongs to Halloween. The holiday’s name itself incorporates this fact, for the word Halloween is derived from its original monicker: All Hallow’s Eve, the eve of All Saints Day. Eventually, folks began calling the night Hallowe’en, with an apostrophe taking place of the V, and even the apostrophe fell out of favor eventually.

Not only is Halloween a good example of the fluid, living nature of language, it’s also a good example of the fluid, living nature of traditions in the seasonal round. Our celebrations have changed a lot over the centuries, but most everything about Halloween––from the costumes to the tricks or treats to the fascination with the macabre and death––takes us back to its original beginnings as Samhain, the Celtic celebration marking the passing of one year and the beginning of another, on this night. It was one of a few nights each year when the portals between worlds, be they worlds of the living and worlds of the dead, or worlds of mortals and worlds of fairies, were open and easily transgressible. A night charged with magic. And if you’ve been reading the Book of Days for a while now, you know how much we love to conjure magic through ceremony.

As you carve your jack o’lantern tonight and as you don your costume and as trick or treaters knock at your door, keep this distant and old magic in mind. The costumes and jack o’lanterns––which, by the way, were originally carved from turnips––were meant to keep evil spirits at bay; the giving of treats as offerings for the souls of those who had come and gone before us. The same and yet so removed from what we do today. And yet if there is magic to be found in crossing through time, there it is in traditions that are handed down from time immemorial.

I was up late last night putting the finishing touches on the annual Convivio Dispatch for Hallowe’en, which has become a bit of a tradition itself, and while I would not go as far as to put the Halloween Dispatch on par with Bailey White’s annual Thanksgiving story on NPR or Charles Dickens’s annual readings of A Christmas Carol, there are a whole bunch of people who seem to look forward to each Halloween’s special Convivio Dispatch from Lake Worth. If you didn’t receive it in your email inbox late last night, that means you are not subscribed for the Convivio Dispatch.

The Dispatches are separate and distinct from the Book of Days Blog; the Dispatches are more about story, and they are mostly about the quirky town I call home. And they come to you as a plain text email, like a little gift. The Dispatch has been like that for years and years and I like it that way: simple, no bells and whistles. If you don’t get the Convivio Dispatch and would like to, send me an email here at the bookworks: mail@conviviobookworks.com. I’ll see that you get last night’s story, as well as the ones that follow. There’s usually one each month; sometimes two. It’s never my goal to clutter your mailbox. As someone who is easily overwhelmed, I know better.

Thank you, and may your Hallowe’en be a spirited one. Keep the fires burning.
John

 

Image: Two jack o’lanterns on our porch one Hallowe’en night. I love Seth’s jack o’lanterns; they never have teeth.

 

 

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