The Oxford Companion to the Year

What are the halcyon days? On what date do the dog days begin? 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." of illustrations.

The Oxford Companion to the Year explores the fascinating history of calendars in general and our own in particular. The calendar used in the West today is just one of a multitude of systems for parcelling up time and naming its divisions. Each of its days has over the centuries acquired its own peculiar significance: the feast day of a saint, the celebration of a historical event, the subject of prose or poetry, the commemoration of a significant historical figure. And for these feasts and seasons there has grown up a rich body of traditions, beliefs, and superstitions, many of them only half-remembered today. Now, for the first time, this body of knowledge is combined with a wide-ranging survey of calendars in an authoritative, absorbing Companion. 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 date. The second part is a broader study of time-reckoning: historical and modern calendars, religious and civil, are explained, with handy tables for the conversion of dates between various systems, and special attention is given to the calculation of Easter. There is a helpful index to facilitate speedy reference. This is a unique reference source, an indispensable aid for all historians and antiquarians, and a rich mine of information, inspiration, and delight for browsers.

Part I: the bulk of the book consists of a January-December listing, divided by month and then by day. Each month begins with information, for example etymology of the name and quotations, dealing with the month in general, and each day contains information on holidays and anniversaries, saints and their legends, historical and social customs, and relevant quotations from historical and modern texts. Part I ends with a discussion of seasons, months, terms, weeks, and days in general, a section on the Western Church and the Orthodox Church years, and finally secular holidays not tied to a specific day (e.g. Thanksgiving).; Part II: a more technical section on calendars, throughout history and across the world, and chronology, including computus.

Bonnie Blackburn, a musicologist, received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970. She has written articles and books on Renaissance music, and is General Editor of the series Monuments of Renaissance Music (University of Chicago Press). She is a member of the Faculty of Music at Oxford University. Leofranc Holford-Strevens, a classicist, received a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1971. The author of Aulus Gellius (1988), he is a desk-editor with Oxford University Press. He has had a long-standing interest in calendars and chronologies.