Calendar Customs

One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. This article is an excerpt of pages 98-99 from the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson with a numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depicting the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Mural photograph: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

This article explores the tentative theories of Seán Ó Súilleabháin regarding the origin of certain legends connected to the Feast of St. Martin in Ireland. Ó Súilleabháin's theory proposed links with near-eastern mythology, and narratives concerning Tammuz/Dumuzi, the Muslim figure of El-Khadir, and St. George, and these links are critically examined by the author. The article also examines links between the figures of Ss. George and Martin, and their role in the agricultural year.

Шарапов В.Э. Пермская экспедиция У.Т. Сирелиуса; Графическая и свободнокистевая роспись по дереву; Качели в календарной обрядности; Детская мебель у коми; Традиционные куклы в поверьях коми; Таинство крещенья в традиции коми христиан; Деревья в погребально-поминальной обрядности коми; Резные намогильные иконы у коми-старообрядцев; Заветные и храмовые праздники // Атлас Республики Коми. – Москва: ДиК, 2001. – С. 126-127; 164-167; 184-185; 186-187; 192-193; 204-211.

The article focuses on the author's research on the chronographical background of the Zodiac Mosaic Calendar in Synagogue at Hammath-Tiberias. He researched to find the origin of mosaic decoration, the twelve zodiac sign, the four seasons, and Helios, which was found in synagogues in two parts of Palestine, Galilee and Judah. The chronograph of the mosaic art was extensively debated. The author further studied the history of Palestine Jews in the 4th century. Most of the work was done during the period of Hillel II.
The author concludes that the mosaic from the Stratum IIa synagogue with the Zodiac Calendar was executed in the time of Hillel II, who said to have died around 365 CE. He proposes the new date of the execution of the Zodiac Mosaic from Hammat-Tiberia (Stratum IIa) after the earthquake in 363, that is, in 364 or 365.

Speculation about what ancient Maya texts have to say about 2012 is becoming a global phenomenon in popular culture. This speculation, largely apocalyptic, is more often based on acquaintance with historical Western interpretations than on familiarity with the texts themselves and their cultural contexts. This paper approaches the 2012 phenomenon through close readings of Maya texts and images considered within the contexts of historical and contemporary Maya culture and Western scholarship. It focuses on images of mythological events depicted on two Late Classic Maya vessels: the 'Vase of the Seven Gods' (Kerr no. 2796) and the 'Vase of the Eleven Gods' (Kerr no. 7750). These images are interpreted as representing deities, gathered in 'cosmogonic conclave', preparing to re-create the world with their sacrifices at the last completion of a great cycle and the beginning of a new 5,125-year 13-Bak tun Maya 'Long Count'. The rites of passage are presided over by an enigmatic Venus-warrior/sacrificer deity previously known only as God L. God L's principal name and nature had remained undeciphered and his identity obscure until the author's researches resulted in the decipherment and 'reading' presented here. This study offers an explication of why God L, whom the author has demonstrated is the Maya god of tobacco among his many aspects, takes the senior role in presiding over these 13-Bak tun completion rituals and why it is reasonable to hypothesize that the same entities would be back for the fulfillment of the present cycle in 2012.

Свистопляска (Свистунья) – это старинный календарный обряд, ежегодно проводившийся в г. Вятке в 4-ю субботу после Пасхи. Согласно местной легенде, когда-то давным-давно вятчане по нелепой случайности перебили союзную рать из г. Великого Устюга, подошедшую к ним ночью на помощь против осаждавших город врагов. В этот день в том месте, где когда-то располагалась вятская божедомка и где погребали «заложных» покойников, проходила панихида по убиенным устюжанам. Затем разворачивалось весёлое гулянье и ярмарка, по всему городу звучали свистульки. К этому дню в соседней слободе Дымкове изготавливались знаменитые дымковские игрушки и свистульки из глины. На архаические черты праздника обращал внимание Д. К. Зеленин, об этом писала также И. Я. Богуславская.

Долгая да широкая Масленица, разбитная бабёнка, гологузка и голохвостка, увешанная вениками и с хвостом ледовой горки – ещё бы ей самой не быть хвостатой! Как кошке и репке… Так мерцают и переплетаются в народной традиции различные образы и мотивы. А за ними проглядывают глубинные смыслы, присущие отдалённой древности с её архаическим мировосприятием.

Пасхальные яйца, изготовление которых известно во всех славянских традициях, представляют собой ритуальный символ, использовавшийся во всех пасхальных обычаях, обрядах и играх, а также в течение всего года -в апотропеических, очистительных, продуцирующих, прогностических и других целях. В статье анализируется материал, связанный с символикой пасхальных яиц в праздничных ритуалах и поверьях славян, а также рассматриваются народные легенды о происхождении пасхальных яиц.

The Old English text known as 'Aecerbot' presents readers with a number of challenges and has been interpreted in diverse ways. I approach it as an elaborate, quasi-liturgical healing text that proscribes a communal remedy for crop-failure, a problem that was sometimes ascribed to witchcraft. While the remedy functions within the context of orthodox Christianity, it includes unorthodox elements that savor of popular religious beliefs and practices. The ritual  calls to mind English calendar customs that are well attested in later eras, including ceremonies taking place on Plough Monday.

Excavations in the 1960s on the site of the short-lived motte-and-bailey castle at South Mimms (then in Middlesex, now in Hertfordshire) recovered, among mid-12th-century demolition debris, part of a red-deer skull and antler, a hole drilled through the antler containing the remains of an iron nail or peg. At the time the excavators suggested it had been intended to be fixed to a wall as a ‘hunting trophy’. This paper discusses this hypothesis, in the light of more recent finds for which a similar identification has been proposed. However, it also considers possible alternative functions in medieval ceremony or ritual, in particular popular customs of the type evidenced by early medieval churchmen’s condemnation of those who went out ‘cervulum facientes’ (playing the stag) at the New Year.

This paper explores the relationship between the eruptions of the abnormal which are a key part of the Gothic genre across media, and the use of the genre within mainstream television series to provide an occasional special episode that breaches the normality of that programme. Such episodes typically occur at particular parts of the year: Christmas in Britain and Hallowe’en in the US. The supernatural element of these episodes forms a wound of irrationality in series which typically depend upon an essentially rational mode, e.g. detective series like Bergerac, Castle and Hawai’i Five-O. This echoes the specialness of the time of the year in those seasonal episodes, times which have been perceived as wounds or weakenings in the boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds. But even in episodes broadcast at other times of the year these intrusions of the abnormal into the apparently normal serve to open up the normative rationality of the texts to suggest a wider universe and the existence of spiritual and supernatural possibilities. These programmes thus suggest that rationality remains the dominant and most useful way of understanding the universe, but that the possibility of the irrational should be accepted.

THE LITURGICAL CALENDAR OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN ROMANIA – A LOCAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE BYZANTINE TRADITION


The liturgical calendar used in the Orthodox Church in Romania dates back to the remote times of antiquity. The structure of the calendar was decisively formed in the period of Byzantium and its use was upheld by the tradition until the 20th century.
The article describes the organization of the Orthodox calendar in Romania. It is divided into three cycles which designate the most significant holidays as well as customs and habits observed by the believers. The basic course is the daily cycle, which allows monks to live according to a specific rhythm determined by prayer, work and rest. It consists of seven prayers that fall at the same times of day and night. The weekly cycle includes seven days of the week starting with Sunday that is the first and at the same time the last day of the week on a symbolic level. Orthodox religion associates particular days of the week with remembering the mystery of faith, a saint or a group of saints. The liturgical week is an icon in the middle of which the Orthodox place Jesus Christ, thus it is often called a Weekly Passover. It symbolically invokes the history of salvation. The annual cycle is divided into the moveable and immoveable feasts (derived from Easter). The Orthodox Church appoints them according to the spiritual, not historical order. The spiritual order displays God’s plan to save humanity. This routine makes a full circle every year, with the same holidays placed along the course.
A deliberate plan to destroy spiritual culture by communist authorities led to partial disappearance of Orthodox traditional customs or transformed them into a folk spectacle. The Communism has fallen and we can witness the resurrection of the Orthodox culture. There is a great return to the liturgical texts as well as to belles lettres created in the Byzantine time. Beside them, the old beliefs, habits and rituals molded in the Byzantine Christianity are slowly brought back to life.

The  medieval  Robin  Hood  ballads  and  the  Robin  Hood games of early modern festal customs are both inextricably bound up    with    ideas    of    community    and    companionship.    The “performative  turn”  in  recent  scholarship  reminds  us  that  the combats and contests of boththe ballads and the folk games are a central part of early modern customary drama, and such amicable feats of strength and competition add to both the community spirit and  the  improvisational  nature  of  such  calendar  customs.  Although  Anthony  Munday’s  adaptation  of  the  Robin  Hood legend  for  the  Elizabethan  stage  necessarily  recasts  this  material significantly,  Munday  at  the  same  time  experiments  with  the thematic  and  dramatic  forms  of  the  earlier  tradition.  I  argue  that like  other  playwrights  at  the  Rose  engaged  in  experiments  in popular  theatre,  Munday  attempted  an  innovative  reworking  of popular material which engaged with his audience’s expectations, not to appropriate Robin Hood, but to recreate his legend afresh.

In his wide-ranging discussion of the origins and significance of the festival of Martinmas, ( “Medieval English Martinmesse: The Archaeology of a Forgotten Festival.” Folklore 111 (2000):231-54), Martin Walsh alluded to the medieval story of the Green Children of Woolpit, and their reported claim to have come from a place called St Martin’s Land. Less than a page of Walsh’s paper is devoted to discussion of the story. Yet it forms what he terms, in the archaeological metaphor of his title, “the lowest stratum of our ‘dig’” and immediately precedes his conclusion that “English Martinmas may have had very deep roots in the aboriginal past.” He introduces the Green Children in support of evidence he has adduced for “a very deep identification of an historical saint with the activities of an early medieval, if not an aboriginal, calendar.” It therefore seems proper to consider the validity of arguments he seems to regard as essential to his case.

Time is an important element of social organization. The temporal models such as the calendar provide social rhythm by regulating various activities. The changing ways of managing time are indicative of social change. This paper presents the changing use of different calendars in Jhokwala Village, Lodhran District, Pakistan. Three calendars are used in most parts of the Punjab to varying degrees for various purposes. These are Bikrami, Islamic Hijri and Gregorian calendars. Each of these calendars has a specific history of use. This paper highlights that people choose between various alternatives in the course of history and the changing use of calendars tells the story of change and continuity in culture and people's attitude towards modern technology and social change.

Calendar feast system, the changes within the system and factors
responsible for them present an important research topic in the study of the contemporary societies in the Soviet-influenced area. This paper elaborates on the trends of invention and reinvention of feasts in the first Republic of Estonia (1918–1940), after World War II (in the Soviet Socialist Estonian Republic) and since the re-establishment of the independent Republic of Estonia (1991). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the structure of feasts in Estonia underwent profound changes due to modernisation and urbanisation. The article describes some important feasts (disguise traditions, student feasts, Christmas, etc.), and invented holidays like for example Mother’s Day. In the 1920s, a system of state, national and public holidays was created; after 1946, national feasts established during the first republic were banned, Christian feasts were excluded from public holidays, and invented feasts were inserted from the common communist calendar (Women’s Day, Red Army Day). In the 1960s, fairs, international days dedicated to certain professions (fishermen, miners, etc.) and public festive days emerged.
The 1990s saw media-propagated newcomers (Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween), and a reinvention of Walpurgis Night (volbripäev) and Mother’s Day. The present study of the calendar feast system reveals that 1) the celebration of feasts follows a nonlinear model of behaviour (as seen in continuing celebration
of unofficial feasts among one’s family), 2) the contemporary system of feasts is highly institutionalised; the celebration of official feasts is canonised, and 3) the importance of church feasts has constantly decreased under the influence of the secularised society. Continuously introducing new holidays which aimed at constructing identity and fostering humane values was characteristic of the 20th century. Significantly, people yearned to take part in entertaining holidays and festivities. The demand brought about village days and local gatherings, including fairs, festivals, celebrations of new holidays, and other events.

This paper explores how the Reformation remoulded the medieval ritual of beating the bounds, whereby at Rogationtide English parishioners progressed around the borders of the parish, often with banners, handbells, and crosses.  Rogationtide has received close scrutiny from historians focused upon its changing socioeconomic contexts: the provision of poor relief, enclosure, and attitudes towards land ownership.  This paper instead identifies a surprising imbrication of festivity, charity, and magical efficacy in the supposedly secularised post-Reformation custom.  Examining non-literary sources alongside Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Robert Herrick’s Hesperides, this paper presents a reading of beating the bounds that, in contrast to the socioeconomic approach, excavates the religious and folkloric meanings submerged in the practice.  It is asked how communal memory and experiences of the supernatural underpin Rogationtide; how narratives about haunted landscapes could express cultural memory; and what work folkloric material does in expressing and dealing with memories of conflict.

One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. This article is an excerpt of pages 98-99 from the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson with a numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depicting the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Mural photograph: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Review of three documentary films by the British author and filmmaker Timothy Neat: 'The Merry Morning of May', on a Cornish calendar festival; 'The Summer Walkers' (with Hamish Henderson), on the traveling people of Scotland; and 'Tig! For the Morn's the Fair Day' (with Hamish Henderson), on  a Scottish Borders calendar festival.

Собранные за последние десятилетия карпатские этнолингвистические данные (карпатские экспедиции Института славяноведения РАН проводились в несколько этапов, в разном составе и с разными целями 1 ) содержат интересный материал, позволяющий дополнить известные по опубликованным источникам факты, касающиеся различных аспектов народной культуры славян карпатского ареала, в ряде случаев уточнить и даже расширить их географию, а также увидеть переклички между карпатоукраинскими и другими славянскими традициями.

This article aims to present an overview of changes in the Easter tradition in Estonia throughout centuries and to characterise its celebration in modern times. Also, a brief introduction of the local peculiarities of the tradition in a nation state, the role of an
individual in continuing the tradition, as well as the impact of politics and the idea of ethnicity on calendar tradition will be presented. The most popular Easter custom in the European countries and also in Estonia was decorating and eating Easter eggs and giving these as gifts: this is the main private symbol of the date in popular culture. In the Orthodox regions of South Estonia it was also customary to roll the eggs. During the past decades, kindergartens, schools and museums have become increasingly important in celebrating Easter and other national and calendar holidays.

Обрядовое использование творожистых изделий (так называемого «сыра») характерно для восточнославянских народно-православных обычаев Петрова дня. А ещё – для русских традиционных свадебных обычаев. Очевидно, такие кушанья были связаны с чадородием, плодородием. И если паломники в первой половине XVIII в. приносили на Нижний Поток, среди прочих подношений, сыр, то это хорошо соотносится с восточнославянскими обычаями Петрова дня. Вятский обряд на Нижнем Потоке, таким образом, предстаёт в ряду народно-православных, а не языческих, обрядов и обычаев.

The beautiful county of Yorkshire is the largest in Britain, and yet still possesses a strong and cohesive regional identity. Built on centuries of shared tradition, a characteristic body of folklore has thrived and endured well into the present day. Folklore of Yorkshire chronicles such beliefs throughout the whole county, identifying distinctive common themes, placing them in their historical context and considering their social and psychological function. You'll discover Yorkshire's holy wells and buried treasure, its boggarts, Black Dogs and fairies, and the legends behind the county's stunning landscape. This fully illustrated book shows how the customs of the past have influenced the ways of today, whilst also revealing something about the nature of folklore itself, both for the tradition-bearers and those who collect it.

This paper will explore the relationship between the eruptions of the abnormal which are a key part of the Gothic genre across media, and the use of the genre within mainstream television series to provide an occasional special episode that breaches the normality of that programme. Such episodes typically occur at particular parts of the year: at Christmas in Britain and at Hallowe’en in the US. The supernatural element of these episodes forms a wound of irrationality in series which typically depend upon an essentially rational mode, such as detective series like  Bergerac, Castle and Hawai’i Five-O. This echoes the specialness of the time of the year in those particularly seasonal episodes, times which have been perceived as wounds or weakenings in the boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds. But even in episodes broadcast at other times of the year these intrusions of the abnormal into the apparently normal serve to open up the normative rationality of the texts to suggest a wider universe and the existence of spiritual and supernatural possibilities, possibilities which can be safely contained by the typical rationality of the shows with the exception of these occasional eruptions. These programmes thus suggest that rationality remains the dominant and most useful way of understanding the universe in a post-Enlightenment Western culture,  as long as the possibility of the irrational is accepted.