Book of Days | from convivio bookworks

Nov 01 2022

Hallowtide

All Hallow’s Eve leads us into Hallowtide: All Saints Day on the First of November, All Souls Day on the Second, and all the days beyond to Martinmas on November 11. This is the time each year when we most remember our beloved dead.

I don’t know what my earliest recollection of Hallowe’en is, but I know that I have loved it since I was a child, and I have not outgrown that excitement. The understanding, too, that Hallowe’en ushers in a time of remembrance is also something I have long understood, thanks mainly to the observances that were part of this time of year for my family each late autumn. Always on the table at Hallowe’en and Ognissanti is a penitential dessert from Puglia, the region in Italy from which my grandparents hailed. The dish, called ciccecútte, is something we eat just at this time of year, which is probably why we understand, from early on, that it is special. It’s made from cooked wheat berries, pomegranate, roasted almonds, and chocolate, covered in vincotto, spiced with cinnamon and cloves. It is a most earthy taste, reminding us of things below, rather than above. It is a dessert that handily calls to mind Persephone’s journey below the earth each autumn and winter, a ritual dish one eats to be in communion with all that rests below the earth.

Besides the pumpkins and the cornstalks, the costumes and the masks, this is what I love about Hallowe’en. And so I beg your forgiveness for the fact that I’ve not even begun your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for November. I’ll get it out to you as soon as I can. But it’s not today, and it may not be for quite a few days. If the calendar was ready for you, here’s what it would say for these first few days of the month:

November 1: All Saints Day (All Hallows)
Hallowe’en ushers in this day honoring all saints. It’s also Samhain, the Celtic New Year, bringing us closer to winter.

November 2: All Souls Day; I Morti; Dia de Los Muertos
These old and sacred celebrations keep us connected to those who have left this world.

November 11: Martinmas
The traditional close of this annual time of remembrance.

COME SEE US!
Our next pop-up market is this Saturday, November 5, from 3 to 9 PM: It’s the Dia de Los Muertos celebration here in Lake Worth at Hatch 1121, which is at 1121 West Lucerne Avenue. You’ll find our ofrenda on display inside Hatch, and we’ll be outside showing most all of our handicrafts from Mexico. Next to us will be my mom showing her Millie’s Tea Towels: each one is embroidered by hand by Mom. Free entry, live music. This community Day of the Dead celebration is great fun. Sorry, we will not be showing at Florida Day of the Dead in Fort Lauderdale this year.

ADVENT CALENDARS
Now’s the time to order Advent calendars and candles! Our calendars are all from Germany; our candles are from Sweden and the UK. Click here to get to our online catalog!

The CONVIVIO DISPATCH for HALLOWE’EN
Folks subscribed to our sister publication, The Convivio Dispatch, which is a more story-focused publication delivered as an email in your inbox, received yesterday our annual Convivio Dispatch for Hallowe’en, which this year was a mystery called “Trembling the Web of Wyrd.” As my gift to you, click here to read the tale. If you like it, please consider subscribing. It’s free and my dispatches are few and far between, trust me… so there won’t be a lot of clutter in your inbox; just an occasional good story.

Image: Our Jack o’ Lanterns this Hallowe’en. Seth’s is the toothless one.

Oct 01 2022

Autumn, Book of Days Calendar, Feast of the Guardian Angels

Autumn Leaves, or Your October Book of Days

October: Such a beautiful month! And here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for the month, hopefully almost as beautiful. Cover star: autumn foliage, which is a scene we don’t see much of here in Lake Worth. The occasional Florida Almond tree will turn suddenly red, perhaps, but this is a few-and-far-between experience. On the heels of Hurricane Ian, the weather here is cool and dry. Ian, in his way, sucked summer away. A rather violent end, but that’s how this land is sometimes. We build seawalls and we pave over the green and we erect concrete structures, but Nature has a way of reminding us who is ultimately in charge. I imagine sometimes all that we build left unattended for a spell and wonder how long it would take for everything to be covered in vines, how long it would take for everything to be reclaimed. Ours is a strange green land that never rests; the vegetation just grows and grows, plants sprouting leaf and tendril without end, day in, day out. So much different than northern climes, where autumn brings winter, and pause and rest.

The apples and pumpkins are shipped to us, and we are grateful to you for this. We’d be lost without you, devoid of all things iconically autumn. We do have the Seminole Pumpkin here, and the Calabaza, but when I sent pictures of these varieties several years ago to a pumpkin-growing friend in Maine –– one who grows old autumnal standards with rich pedigrees like the deep red Rouge vif d’Etampes pumpkin and the blue green Jahhradale pumpkin –– well, she made it clear she was not impressed. The Seminole and the Calabaza are good eating, but they are not the prettiest pumpkins in the patch. We thank you, then, for all the beautiful pumpkins you send to our markets, and for all the crisp, tart apples.

This autumnal month begins in an angelic way with the Feast of the Guardian Angels on the Second of October. It is an old, old celebration, dating back the Fourth Century, when folks began setting up altars in their homes honoring their angelic protectors. It is one of the oldest feasts of the Church, and one of the most personal. It is said that each of us has an angelic protector, and that we rarely know all they do for us. Me, I do my best to remember that maybe that driver who pulls into the road in front of me and slows me down is perhaps saving me from some terrible accident that may have happened further up the road had I not been hindered. Maybe that driver is my guardian angel. Maybe his name is Pablo and maybe he didn’t really deserve all the expletives I was hurling his way. Maybe I need to appreciate moments like this more than I do. The Feast of the Guardian Angels is perhaps the logical conclusion to the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel that we celebrated on the 29th of September: an angelic time of year. Also this month: Yom Kippur and Sukkot in the Jewish calendar, and in the Hindu, Sikh, and Jain calendar, Diwali: the Festival of Lights. Hallowe’en, at the close of this month, welcomes us to the time each year when we remember our beloved dead, keeping them close at heart. This union is part of what makes October such a beautiful month.

COME SEE US!
Our pop-up market season begins next weekend! Our first big event is OKTOBERFEST at the American German Club, 5111 Lantana Road, Lake Worth FL 33463. Two consecutive weekends: Friday, Saturday, & Sunday October 7 through 9, then again the following Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, October 14 through 16. Convivio Bookworks will be there in our big new 10′ x 20′ tent, and right next door in a normal size tent, you’ll find my mom and sister, selling Mom’s hand-embroidered Millie’s Tea Towels. You need to purchase tickets in advance for Oktoberfest; it’s rare that tickets are still available at the gate. Click here for tickets and more information. It’s a wonderful event, and we plan to have our full line of handcrafted artisan goods from Germany there, for all the seasons of the year: not just fall, but spring and Christmas, too.

AUTUMN SALE
For the next week or so at our online store we’re offering $10 off your purchase of $85 or more, plus get free domestic shipping. Just use discount code AUTUMN22 at checkout. We’re adding new items this time of year almost daily! You’ll find new items from Germany for Hallowe’en and Christmas, plus new Advent calendars and candles are coming this week, and we’re getting ready for Dia de Los Muertos, too. Lots to see! CLICK HERE to shop!

Sep 25 2022

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Autumn, Feast of the Guardian Angels, Rosh Hashanah

Sweetness & Radiance

September comes to a close this week and as it does, we get to celebrate with subtle sweetness. We begin with the setting sun this 25th of September and the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Apples and honey are traditional to Rosh Hashanah: eat these sweet things to help ensure a sweet year ahead. You might also eat challah bread and Teiglach: small balls of dough that are baked in honey and mixed with chopped roasted almonds and candied cherries. My family discovered them one September in a local Jewish bakery. We were mesmerized by the tin plates of Teiglach, piled high into a cone, wrapped in cellophane. They reminded us so much of the struffoli we make each Christmas. We bought a plateful and took it home and the teiglach was so good, we went back the next day for another. Something about the nuts and the cherries and the honey make for a sublime combination of sweetness and substance and texture. Eventually, we began making our own, and my sister’s Teiglach are what you see in the photo above. They are so good! L’shanah Tovah is the greeting we say: Have a good, sweet year.

The next day, on the 26th of September, we celebrate the birthday of John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed: our great American apple-planting frontier traveler. He was born at the height of apple season in 1774. Read his story, watch the short animated Disney Melody Time film about him. At the very least, eat an apple. Better yet: drink a tankard of hard cider. John Chapman was not so much interested in planting apples for eating as he was in planting apples for cider making. Back then, cider, thanks to its alcohol content, was a lot safer to drink than water!

We close the month on the 29th with Michaelmas, honoring Michael the Archangel. Blackberries are traditional to Michaelmas, thanks to the story of Michael battling Satan, the fallen angel. As the story goes, when Satan fell to Earth, he landed in a bramble patch––a blackberry patch. I love blackberries, but I can tell you––from well remembered experience harvesting blackberries in Maine––that they are a fruit that will make you curse and swear as you gather them. So many thorns. They lay claim to your clothes and wound you. Satan cursed the bramble patch he landed upon, and legend has it that he returns each year to curse and spit upon that same patch. Some folks will not eat blackberries after Michaelmas for this very reason.

Roast goose for dinner is traditional for Michaelmas, and it is one of the first traditional nut-roasting nights of autumn. In Scotland, there are Struan Micheil, Michaelmas bannocks, somewhat like a scone but a flatbread, basically, cut into wedges, typically made from equal amounts of oats, barley, and rye, traditionally made without the use of metal: wooden fork, wooden or ceramic bowl, baking stone. And served, of course, with blackberries or blackberry jam.

The day belongs to St. Michael the Archangel, but traditions have arisen in various parts of the world that honor other angels this day, too. Some will honor Gabriel and Raphael along with Michael. Others will include Uriel, Raguel, Ramiel, and Sariel. This is something I’ve written about in the past about Michaelmas, but will say it again, for I love speaking this litany of angelic names each autumn, and the further down the roster we go, the more mysterious the names become as we cross a fascinating linguistic bridge to ancient tongues. The “-el” suffix of these angelic names is Sumerian in origin, signifying “brightness” or “shining,” names that in their true form would be Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Uri-el, Ragu-el, Rami-el, Sari-el. The list continues: Camael, Jophiel, and Zadkiel; Anael, Simiel, and Oriphiel; Metatron, Israfil, and Malak al-Maut. Their etymology connects to the Akkadian ilu (radiant one), the Babylonian ell (shining one), the Old Welsch ellu (shining being), Old Irish aillil (shining), Anglo-Saxon aelf (radiant being), and English elf (shining being). Speak these names aloud; immediately we are transported to an ancient time, a time when angels were perhaps more commonly seen, in all their radiance.

Are they still around? Many folks think so, and I am not one to doubt them. In a few days time, on the 2nd of October, we’ll celebrate another angelic day, one even older than Michaelmas and one much more personal: the Feast of the Guardian Angels. Its roots are in the Fourth Century, when believers began setting up altars in their homes each October in honor of their angelic protectors. How auspicious that we get to walk amongst angels this time each year.

COME SEE US!
We begin popping up a lot throughout South Florida these last few months of the year. Here’s where you’ll find us in October:

OKTOBERFEST
Friday, Saturday, & Sunday October 7, 8, & 9, and again Friday, Saturday, & Sunday October 14, 15, & 16. Tickets are required and must be purchased ahead of time (and they usually sell out). Click here for tickets.
American German Club
5111 Lantana Road, Lake Worth, FL 33463
We’ll be there both weekends with our big 10′ x 20′ tent filled with German Advent Calendars and handmade artisan goods from Germany for seasons throughout the year, and right next door to us you’ll find my mom and sister in their own tent selling Mom’s embroidery work: Millie’s Tea Towels.

November dates include Dia de Los Muertos in Lake Worth and Florida Day of the Dead in Fort Lauderdale (both on Saturday November 5, sorry!), the Swedish Julmarknad (Christmas Market) in Boca Raton on November 19, Krampusnacht on December 9 at the American German Club in Lake Worth, and Krampusnacht leads us into the American German Club’s Christkindlmarkt on December 10 and 11. I’ll keep you posted of each right here at the blog, or check the events listing at our Facebook page: @conviviobookworks.