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The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning
What are the halcyon days? On what date do the dog days begin? What is Hansel Monday? How do Chinese, Muslim, Mesoamerican, Jewish, and Babylonian calendars differ from Christian calendars? The answers to these and hundreds of other intriguing questions about the way humans have marked and measured time over the millennia can be found in The Oxford Companion to the Year .
The desire to set aside certain periods of time to mark their significance is a transhistorical, transcultural phenomena. Virtually all cultures have marked special days or the feast day of a saint, the celebration of a historical event, the turning of a season, a period of fasting, the birthday of an important historical figure. Around these days a rich body of traditions, beliefs, and superstitions have grown up, many of them only half-remembered today. Now, for the first time, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens combine this body of knowledge with a wide-ranging survey of calendars across cultures in an authoritative and engaging one-volume reference work. The first section of The Oxford Companion to the Year is a day-by-day survey of the calendar year, revealing the history, literature, legend, and lore associated with each season, month, and day. The second part provides a broader study of historical and modern calendars, religious and civil,
are explained, with handy tables for the conversion of dates between various systems and a helpful index to facilitate speedy reference.
The Oxford Companion to the Year is a unique and uniquely delightful reference source, an indispensable aid for all historians and antiquarians, and a rich mine of information and inspiration for browsers.
The desire to set aside certain periods of time to mark their significance is a transhistorical, transcultural phenomena. Virtually all cultures have marked special days or the feast day of a saint, the celebration of a historical event, the turning of a season, a period of fasting, the birthday of an important historical figure. Around these days a rich body of traditions, beliefs, and superstitions have grown up, many of them only half-remembered today. Now, for the first time, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens combine this body of knowledge with a wide-ranging survey of calendars across cultures in an authoritative and engaging one-volume reference work. The first section of The Oxford Companion to the Year is a day-by-day survey of the calendar year, revealing the history, literature, legend, and lore associated with each season, month, and day. The second part provides a broader study of historical and modern calendars, religious and civil,
are explained, with handy tables for the conversion of dates between various systems and a helpful index to facilitate speedy reference.
The Oxford Companion to the Year is a unique and uniquely delightful reference source, an indispensable aid for all historians and antiquarians, and a rich mine of information and inspiration for browsers.
937 pages, Hardcover
First published November 11, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 10, 2009
Not only do you get details of important events on each day of the year (saints' days, Roman calendar etc), but also stuff on calendrical systems, days of the week and lots of astonishingly obscure detail. Just what you'd expect from OUP.
June 23, 2025
I swear I feel ridiculous reviewing a text published in 1999 by Oxford University Press by saying things like “some parts are so heavily anti-Catholic they end up being misleading if not outright inaccurate”... but here we are.
Let’s accept that the authors never miss a chance to make it clear (using a tone bordering on paternalistic) that they dismiss many aspects of Catholic belief as superstition (which is perfectly fine, of course, but I didn’t pick this up to hear about their personal theology). Let’s even accept some frankly odd passages that sound like: “nowadays many Anglicans feel great sympathy for this figure, but they should remember that if it had been up to him, the Church of England would never have separated from Rome” (um... okay? We’re not at Sunday school, are we?).
But there are points where their bias borders on historical inaccuracy (for example, when they talk about the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages), and others where their stance is so extreme it’s downright disheartening (such as: “on this day a saint Munditia was celebrated, but there is no such saint, so let’s move on”. Excuse me? We’re talking about a centuries-old devotion that still survives today. Would it be so hard to say “there’s no solid historical evidence for a woman named Munditia, but here’s how she was venerated over time”? I mean, that’s what I’m here for: the history. What’s the rationale: telling the history of calendrical feasts, but only those that don’t offend the authors’ religious sensibilities?).
Other than that, it’s a fine piece of work, otherwise well-researched and rich in content, but when it comes to Catholic customs (especially anything post-Reformation) it gets very shaky. Honestly, I had to double-check what year this volume’s first edition came out, because at times it felt like I was reading a 19th-century text, judging by the tone (and frankly, I find it curious that OUP could publish some of these pages as late as 1999. Even more curious that the book is still in print today!)
Let’s accept that the authors never miss a chance to make it clear (using a tone bordering on paternalistic) that they dismiss many aspects of Catholic belief as superstition (which is perfectly fine, of course, but I didn’t pick this up to hear about their personal theology). Let’s even accept some frankly odd passages that sound like: “nowadays many Anglicans feel great sympathy for this figure, but they should remember that if it had been up to him, the Church of England would never have separated from Rome” (um... okay? We’re not at Sunday school, are we?).
But there are points where their bias borders on historical inaccuracy (for example, when they talk about the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages), and others where their stance is so extreme it’s downright disheartening (such as: “on this day a saint Munditia was celebrated, but there is no such saint, so let’s move on”. Excuse me? We’re talking about a centuries-old devotion that still survives today. Would it be so hard to say “there’s no solid historical evidence for a woman named Munditia, but here’s how she was venerated over time”? I mean, that’s what I’m here for: the history. What’s the rationale: telling the history of calendrical feasts, but only those that don’t offend the authors’ religious sensibilities?).
Other than that, it’s a fine piece of work, otherwise well-researched and rich in content, but when it comes to Catholic customs (especially anything post-Reformation) it gets very shaky. Honestly, I had to double-check what year this volume’s first edition came out, because at times it felt like I was reading a 19th-century text, judging by the tone (and frankly, I find it curious that OUP could publish some of these pages as late as 1999. Even more curious that the book is still in print today!)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews