with the monthview control is there a way to set different background color for different days?

About the closest you can get to doing what you want to is to display the selected days in Bold like so:

Thisform.oMonthView.Object.DayBold( '12-25-2005' ) = .T.
Thisform.oMonthView.Object.DayBold( '12-30-2005' ) = .T.