This book has two distinct sections. The first deals with the history of the calendar and the second takes the reader on a journey through the year month by month, with a section on selected days within each month. The book has a subsidiary sub-title explaining that it is a “miscellany”, which should serve as a warning to potential readers that this book makes no claim (wisely) of being comprehensive in its coverage.
The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that this book, as befits one written and published in the US of A, is only concerned with the origins of the calendar currently used by the majority of North Americans. Therefore any calendars that have been created down the years that have not contributed to the present-day American calendar are omitted. So there's nothing in here for example about Chinese or Mayan calendars. Even amongst American feast days and holidays there is no mention of Martin Luther King Day or Kwanzaa – evidently these days are too recent to qualify for inclusion, or maybe belong to the wrong tradition – the calendar in this book is based around the pagan – christian hybrid that crossed the Atlantic from NW Europe.
Although most of the information about particular dates seems relatively uncontentious, the author occasionally lapses into nonsense: "a central tenet of Celtic belief insisted that all men and women were equal creatures under one god" (p.51) – even on the same page that talked about Celts having many gods; "There are certain mornings in April - ... birdsong rising in the pale green of the willows – that surely carry some memory of the first fine mornings of the world." (p.126) – the first morning would be about 4.5 billion years ago and there were birds there? And finally "Harvest festivals predate language, and they probably began as a way of thanking the gods for a successful crop." (p.181) How any people could thank gods (or invent them) without language I don't know.
The book is too specific to be of much use outside of the US of A and its lack of a bibliography will inhibit its use as an introductory text. It's one of those books that people buy as a gift when they have run out of any other options.
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