The Dance of Time: The Origins of the Calendar: A Miscellany of History and Myth, Religion and Astronomy, Festivals and Feast Days

I came across this little paperback tucked in between more impressive-looking tomes at the bookstore in the European History section. If not for the subtitle, "A Miscellany of History and Myth, Religion and Astronomy, Festivals and Feast Days," I'd never have bought it, because the title proper does not satisfactorily describe the content. I am not interested in TIME, per se, but I did write a master's thesis in folkart and am very interested in all kinds of folklore, genealogy, ritual, and comparative religion. So I bought it and have loved it...great bedside companion on these wintry nights. A huge bonus is the beautiful writing style of Mr. Judge - he makes pictures in my head - the highest praise of this artist/folklorist. The book justifies the deep human yearning to celebrate the cycles of the natural world without having to deny one's more conventional religious upbringing (no doubt a growing concern since paganism is one of the fastest growing religions). Comforting.

This is an excellent reference work on the origins of the calendar. For instance, the ancient Romans left 60 days of winter out of the calendar for practical reasons. The Chinese Water Clock originated in 1008. The Celtic calendar consisted of the dark half of winter and the light half of summer or milder weather. There are literary expressions throughout. i.e. Awake. And in the fires of spring Your wintry garden repentance fling. by Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam The work is perfect for historians, time watchers, students of geography and world history. The acquisition would be helpful for a wide constituency of writers, publishers and others in academia.

The origins of our present calendar go way back in time. But how far, and what's the real story of the early Christians taking over the earlier pagan holiday of Saturnalia so to usurp a pagan orgy by making it the day for the Mass of Christ, reversed to be Christmas. Or what about Halloween, the oldest of all the holidays, and the closest to its original form. And why is Easter the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. These are the kinds of stories that fill this book. Perhaps it is not the deepest most thoughtful book of all time, but it makes quite interesting reading.

Our changing concept of time and the surprising, often mysterious origins of the calendar come to life in this richly informative, beautifully written book. Did you know that the ancient Romans left sixty days of winter out of their calendar, considering those two months a dead time of lurking terror and therefore better left unnamed? That they had a horror of even numbers, hence the tendency for months to have an odd number of days? That robed and bearded Celtic druids stand behind our New Year's figurehead, Father Time? That if Thursday is Thor's day, then Friday belongs to Freya, Odin's faithful wife and queen of the Norse gods? That the word Easter may derive from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, whose con-sort was a hare, our Easter Bunny? Three streams of history created the Western calendar-from the east, beginning with the Sumerians, from the Celtic and Germanic peoples in the north, and again from the east, this time from Palestine with the rise of Christianity. Michael Judge teases out the contributions of each stream to the shape of the calendar, to the days and holidays, and to thelore associated with them. Here he finds glimpses of a way of seeing before the mechanical time of clocks, when the rhythms of man and woman matched those of earth and sky, and the sacred was born. Unlike a watch or a clock, the calendar does not presume to duplicate time. Instead, it serves as a landscape of time, a description not of the thing itself, but of what the thing may mean; a cry not for scientific precision but for emotional understanding. Unlike other timekeeping devices, the calendar is organic: a social contract reminding hurried modern creatures of their debt to nature and to the past. Most people have forgotten, having surrendered their time to mechanisms, why Halloween falls at the end of October, why the birth of Christ is proclaimed in winter's darkness, why Easter and Passover come hand in hand with the spring. Yet it is exactly in answering these questions that we discover a remarkable world, far and yet near, ancient and yet as new as tomorrow's sunrise, where symbol and reality conjoin. I mean this: in late autumn, with the shadows growing, the calendar summons children to carve leering faces into pumpkin flesh; a tribute, though they do not know it, to all of their dead ancestors, returning for one night from the loam, and a reminder, though they need not yet heed it, of the ghosts that they will one day be-come. The calendar fences the latter days of December away from the rest of the common year, commanding the vulgar world to pause and await the birth of the savior and his symbol, the returning sun. The calendar commands that Easter can only occur after the vernal equinox, when Christ returns amid robins and blooming hyacinth, lengthening days, and sudden rains, and, like nature after winter's cruelty, is reconciled to the world. Halloween and the death of the year, Christmas lights shining in the depths of winter, East