Creating HH's Calendar

"The living religious practice of the Greeks is concentrated on the festivals, heortai, which interrupt and articulate everyday life. The order of the calendar is largely identical with the sequence of festivals. For this reason the calendars exhibit an extreme particularism; there are virtually as many calendars as there are cities and tribes.... Nevertheless, the ancient Greek calendars are all constructed in the same way: the month is in principle a genuine moon, which lasts from the new moon through the full moon to the disappearance of the moon; harmonization with the solar year and the seasons is achieved through the insertion of additional months which are manipulated , however, in a very arbitrary manner. The twelve moons of the year each have their local names, and these names are almost always taken from gods and festivals. The civil year and the church year coincide; on lives not only from moon to moon, but from one festival to the next. The calendar of a city or tribe is always at the same time a fundamental document for the locally defined religion." Burkert, Greek Religion, pg 225

As Burkert goes onto explain, when looking at the Attic calendar, the one we have the most historical information on, each lunar month takes the name of the festival of that full moon. Therefore, the month of Hekatombaion is named after a Hekatombaia festival in honour of Apollon, the month of Metageitnion for the festival of Metageitnia, and so on and so forth.

He also comments on how the ancient Hellenic calendars take little account of the natural rhythm of the agricultural year. There is no month of sowing or harvest, no grape-gathering month. The names are taken from the artificial festivals of the polis. Since agriculture is dependent on the weather, it would constantly come into conflict with the changeable lunar months. 

"The calendar therefore accentuates the autonomous rhythm of the life of the community; the rhythms of nature will fit in from time to time, if only because in the relations between men and gods everything has it's order." - Greek Religion, pg. 226


With all this said, how do we go about creating our own calendar for our polis?

The first important fact to remember is that ancient Hellas was a very tribal culture. Every polis had their own calendars, festivals, and unique practices. I do not therefore feel that we should be limited to stick with following the Attic calendar. We at Hestia's Hearth (HH) have created our own tribe. We are creating our own unique version of Hellenismos. Therefore, our calendar, festivals and holy days should reflect our practices, rather than the practices of an ancient polis when we do not have clear, surviving evidence of their practices.

Which leads me to an issue which has bothered me for a long time: Why do so many modern Hellenics feel the need to follow an ancient calendar (the Attic calendar) when we have so little surviving information on the main festivals? If each month is a reflection of the full moon festival, and we have such little information on what each festival was actually about, how it was celebrated - how does it make sense to continue to work with that model?

As was brought to my attention, not every modern Hellenic works with a group. Many are solitary practitioners, and for the sake of feeling connected and "in-sync", I can understand sticking to the attic calendar. However, that is not the case for HH. We have a group of committed members and we are growing. We are all local and gather regularly. We as a community need to look ahead at solidifying our own calendar around our own festivals which have deep meaning to us, rather than stick to loose ideas of "what the ancients did".



This is the beginning of a blog series on Creating Our HH Calendar.