2019: Calendars and Friends

Winter officially started on Friday, Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice. Putting a positive spin on that news, the hours of daylight have already started expanding, if only by a few minutes a day.
As a guide at a historical house in West Marlborough built by a prominent early Quaker, I'm sometimes asked why Friends traditionally used numbers instead of names for the months of the year and days of the week.
The Tract Association of Friends, which publishes a calendar each year, provides a good explanation. Names like March and Friday were derived from "non-Christian sources" (for example, March from the Roman god Mars; Friday from Frigg, Saxon queen of the gods). Thus, using them is "inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian faith."
"Although general custom can, in the long run, determine the correctness of language and vocabulary," the group declares solemnly, "it cannot pass upon right and wrong."



What January 2019 looks like on the 2019 Friends' Calendar.