Use of Calendar

Question

I am learning about Calendars. My immediate aim is to print, as JLabels, the following for example:
Thu May 1
Fri May 2
Sat May 3
etc.
I have discovered that I need to create an instance of GregorianCalendar. I am able to set the required date, and change it in steps. Temporarily I am using println to see the results.
The API Library refers to the use of APRIL and SATURDAY etc as constant integers. I would like to know how to use these in two places.
The first is in the set method, where it won't compile if I use MAY instead of 4 as a parameter.
The second is in the get method; how do I get DAY_OF_WEEK to read Thu or THURSDAY?
I would appreciate any advice on how to implement these constant integers.
// (in class fields) 
  private Calendar calend = new GregorianCalendar();
// (In class constructor)
    // Set up calendar
        calend.set(2008,4,31);
        System.out.println(calend.get(Calendar.YEAR) + " Month:"
            + calend.get(Calendar.MONTH) + " Date:"
             + calend.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH) + " Day:"
             + calend.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
         calend.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,1);
         System.out.println(calend.get(Calendar.YEAR) + " Month:"
             + calend.get(Calendar.MONTH) + " Date:"
             + calend.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH) + " Day:"
             + calend.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));The output of this is
2008 Month:4 Date:31 Day:7
2008 Month:5 Date:1 Day:1
Edited by: uktrail on Apr 25, 2008 4:53 AM: error re DAY OF WEEK

Answer 1

Thank you, your first reply works well.
But your second reply leaves me somewhat bewildered.
First, the library says that Calendar is an abstract class. This is the first time I have come across abstract classes, so I look them up and find that you cannot instantiate an abstract class. Yet here you are quoting a Calendar method which DOES create an instance of Calendar! ??
I understood that a reason for using GregorianCalendar is that this has the methods of Calendar but it CAN be instantiated.
You then suggest creating a Date object with the required Year, Month, Date of month, and using that to initialise my Calendar. But I can only create a Date object using a microsecond-style time! As far as I can see, I can only get 2008-May-1 into one of these objects using GregorianCalendar.set or similar. (You do mention that possibility, but it seems to me to be the ONLY possibilty, in which case why not do it at creation?)
Given that I have no interest in the current time or locale, and I don't want to have to calculate the microsecond-time of 2008-May-1, why is your method preferable?