Personal Time

This is a terrible confession to make, but my two best pals are my budget book and my desk diary. The former is our protection against an improvident old age, and the latter is my memory aid, journal, habit tracker and sketchbook. Its lovely blank, holiday-free spaces can be filled in with only those days that are special to me: birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday, Canadian Mother's Day, Canadian Father's Day, and a very few others. 

I looked forward to buying the same version of the desk diary, but when it arrived and I looked inside I was terribly disappointed. It was like discovering a beloved friend has become a preachy scold. The month-at-a-glance section is littered with alleged holidays, some of which I have never seen before, and whole months are assigned tasks like "Hispanic Heritage Month"--which seems rather odd in the UK. Perhaps there is an enormous Spanish-speaking population in London. Needless to say, two whole months have been dedicated to the celebration of homosexuality. 

One of the selling points of this journal--and indeed of the stationary company that makes it--is that it can be personalized. You can have your name added to the front. I enjoy this. However, the ideology of time behind my name has nothing to do with me. And it's worse than relativist: it is ideological. 

The designer's own idea of what the year should look like intrudes. Millions agree that January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus. However, the designer believes it is National Mentoring Month. February, for Catholics, is the month of the Holy Family. The designer instructs me that it is LGBT History Month. March makes me think of St. Patrick and St. Joseph. The designer prompts me to remember National Women's History Month. And so the whole year goes. 

I stopped following a friend on Twitter because I was so creeped out by his posting pages from the French Republican (or Revolutionary) calendar. This calendar was used by the murderous French government between 1793 and 1805 and was meant to sweep away from the French mind the Old France of royalty and Catholicism. This new calendar must have been very disorientating to those Frenchmen who could not avoid it.  

Naturally this reminds me of the changes to the Calendar of the Saints between 1960 and 1970. That, too, must have been a rug-pull to the Catholics around at the time. My own saint, St. Dorothy of Caesarea, had an enormous following in Northern Europe but was nevertheless dropped from the General Roman Calendar in the 1960s and replaced by St. Paul Miki and Companions in our collective devotions. These heroic Japanese martyrs do indeed deserve our veneration, but February 6 is still St. Dorothy's Day, just as February 14 is still St. Valentine's Day, as important as Cyril and Methodius were in the evangelization of the Slavs. 

If pressed, I could also carry on at length about downgrading the long season of Pentecost to Ordinary Time, a strange expression that returns my thoughts to the French Revolution where they shift uneasily and fidget. 

I admit that I am enormously privileged in my isolation. Working from home, I am cloistered from the British workplace, and therefore celebrate only my own holidays--and, in a small way, American Thanksgiving. I am not sure how strictly secular celebrations are enforced, but it is possible that many UK workplaces enliven their grey carpeting and desk pods with decorations celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week or Sharad Navratri or Movember. Certainly they decorate with rainbow ribbons and decals in summer (and to a lesser degree in February). 

Meanwhile, the UK's commercial Christmas is about to start; its Advent began in late October when the "Advent calendars" (that is, gift boxes containing 24 overpriced items) became available. I am reminded of my Canadian childhood confusion about Cadbury's Easter Creme eggs (as they are not called here); you could buy them only until Easter, which meant that those who had given up sweets for Lent ran the risk of never eating one. (Happily for my sugar-craving junior self, they turned up in our Easter baskets.) Christian Advent is a penitential season; the "Advent calendars" tempt me not at all, and a Polish pal shared her shock that people in Britain have Christmas parties before actual Christmas.   

I should be grateful that Easter was (in my childhood) still so much part of local culture, as Christmas is  in Britain today. In fact, I see that the designer of my year has not bothered to write that December is Universal Human Rights Month. That has been presumably trumped by Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa--and great is my surprise that anyone in the UK wants Kwanzaa on their desk diary.  

Strange to say, I was absolutely furious about changes to my desk diary, a fury that has abated only now. Perhaps it is because I now realize how fortunate I am to have the freedom to acknowledge only the calendar I prefer. I have ordered a wall version from the Monks of Papa Stronsay, and I hope it arrives before this year's FSSP one runs out. 

Meanwhile, a very happy St. Clement's Day to you all ! I shall now send greetings to a young blacksmith of my acquaintance.