Posts Categorized: Holidays
It really is a strange ritual we pull off each year. We mean well, with this Thanksgiving of ours, but intention only carries so far. The Thanksgiving myth, you know, is a fiction. A nice fiction, a Norman Rockwell fiction, but fiction nonetheless. Did our WASP ancestors eat with the locals way back when? Probably,… more »
It’s Halloween, the time to celebrate death. ghosts, goblins, vampires, and zombies. It’s the time you get to be someone or something else. For me, it’s the holiday when costumed strangers show up uninvited and demand some form of extortion before they go away. Whatever happened to the “tricks” part? Living as I do in… more »
I’m re-running a post from 2016, with some edits. With thanks to thinglink.com for the image. Prior to today’s post preparation, I knew this holiday mostly through its connection to “the Yom Kippur War” of 1973. As a result, I set out to write (and learn) about Yom Kippur. Most of us know that Yom Kippur is… more »
I set out wanting to better understand a holiday that is celebrated in my own backyard, yet is one I know very little about: Ash Wednesday In the process I found myself thinking once again about the the churches I attended as a child and the neighborhoods I once lived in. I spent a few… more »
Have you wondered as I have why February was chosen as the month to honor African-Americans? Actually, I wonder, when choice is involved, why anything is celebrated in winter. Celebrations, to me, are best exercised outdoors, in the sun, with balmy breezes blowing. But, I was not consulted, so February it is. Officially established in… more »
You’ve heard of Kwanzaa? I hadn’t until I moved to Philadelphia. Even then, what I thought I knew has turned out to be mistaken. So, what better opportunity might there be to learn about this rapidly growing American-founded holiday than to write a blog post? I loved what I discovered and I hope you will… more »
How do you think of Christmas time? Over the past few decades, I’ve come to see winter as a time of peace. A time to pull inward; a time for personal reflection and a time to breath in the wonder and awe in the world around me. The story that most connects me to the power… more »
Yesterday was “giving Tuesday,” a fairly new idea. And a global movement, I hasten to add. And I’m late, I know; my posts come out on Wednesdays. STILL, this seems a “better late than never” opportunity. So here we go. As I write this on Monday night, I see that over $300,000,000 in gifts has… more »
Norman Rockwell shows us one way to celebrate Thanksgiving. There’s an interesting backstory to this painting, which I’ll share quickly. This is one of “The Four Freedoms,” paintings inspired by FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address. All four — Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear — were wildly popular… more »
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