Introduction - Regulating Customs

Calendar customs help us make sense of the passing of time. We learn
them by watching, doing, and taking part, but how do we know what
to do, when to do it, and what not to do? The answer is regulation,
the means by which customary practices are shaped, inluenced, and
controlled. From bottom-up evolving practices to top-down international, national, and civic guidelines, the range of regulatory forces is
remarkable, as is their creative role in mediating the tensions between
conservation and innovation that are central to traditional practices.
Calendar customs have been with us for millennia, emerging out
of our need to live in some kind of known relationship to the world
around us, whether that be knowing when wild foodstuffs will ripen,
when and where animals can be found, or in knowing when to plant and
harvest to best avoid the vagaries of climate and weather. We respond
to the changing seasons and cycles, learning their nuances to take advantage of experience. Such accumulated practical knowledge gives us
a modicum of control over the environment as we develop appropriate practices. Such is our necessity and characteristic desire to control
the world around us that our customs inevitably develop an element
of magical causation, whether through diverse vernacular beliefs, or
formal religious thinking. Even the most basic act of marking an astronomical or seasonal milestone gives us a sense, or at least a hope, that
we know what is happening. Ultimately, our calendar customs reflect
an attempt to control the uncontrollable, to predict the unpredictable,
in order to improve our odds of making it through another year. In effect, we feel that, in regulating ourselves, we regulate the world around
us (and vice-versa), a wildly anthropocentric view which, ultimately,
might not be as naïve as it seems, as can be seen in the unfolding climate apocalypse.