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"Labor Day in the United States is a public holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the country. It is the Monday of the long weekend known as Labor Day Weekend and it is considered the unofficial end of summer. Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. "Labor Day" was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty U. S. states officially celebrated Labor Day. Following the deaths of workers at the hands of United States Army and United States Marshals Service during the Pullman Strike of 1894, the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve legislation to make Labor Day a national holiday and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law six days after the end of the strike. Cleveland supported the creation of the national holiday in an attempt to shore up support among trade unions following the Pullman Strike. Labor Day is called the "unofficial end of summer" because it marks the end of the cultural summer season (summer scientifically ends at the September Equinox anytime from September 21 to 24). Many take their two-weeks vacation during the two weeks ending Labor Day Weekend. Many Fall activities, such as school and sports, begin about this time. To take advantage of large numbers of potential customers with time to shop, Labor Day has become an important weekend for discounts and allowances by many retailers in the United States, especially for back-to-school sales. Some retailers claim it is one of the largest sale dates of the year, second only to the Christmas season's Black Friday."
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"You’ve heard that curiosity killed the cat, but it was actually superstition that did her in — particularly in Medieval Europe and early North American settlements. Understanding how cats became steeped in superstition requires some eye of newt, a dash of folklore, and a splash of old-time religion. Cats originally were highly esteemed in ancient Egypt. (It was a capital offense to kill one!) According to The Domestic Cat: The Biology of its Behaviour, Egyptians kept cats as pets, and, when a family cat died, mourners shaved their eyebrows as a “mark of respect." Such reverence for cats was no coincidence. With a woman’s body and a cat’s head, the Egyptian goddess Bastet was a positive symbol of female sexuality, fertility, and motherhood. But jump to Medieval Europe and you’ll find cats didn’t fare nearly as well. Authors of The Domestic Cat cite the "gradual extinction of the pagan gods and goddesses, and the rise and spread of Christianity" as having shaped the public’s view of cats into something sinister. (Itself likely rooted in pagan tradition, Halloween was also thought to have been co-opted by Christianity.) Through this new framework, cats became “malevolent demons, agents of the Devil, and the traitorous companions of witches and necromancers.” In the 1903 classic The Book of the Cat, Frances Simpson writes, "It was believed that the Devil borrowed the coat of a black cat when he wished to torment his victims." The result? Black cats were frequently chased, tortured, and burned alive—especially during religious festivals and feasts. Cats’ blood was frequently used in sundry spells and cures, and cats were often either characterized as witches’ familiars or witches who had taken a cat’s form. As such, "witches" and their cats were typically punished together. Recorded in Richard Kieckhefer’s European Witch Trials, there are countless records like this one: "1420 or 1423 Rome woman burned by inquisitor for changing self into form of cat and killing children with Devil’s aid." And, Simpson notes, "After a famous French trial in the 17th Century, a woman condemned as a murderess was hung in an iron cage over a slow fire and 14 poor, unoffending cats were made to share the same fate." But Author Harrison Weir blamed static electricity for the cat’s historical bad luck. In Our Cats and All About Them, he writes, "A very remarkable peculiarity of the domestic cat is the extraordinary property which its fur possesses of yielding electric sparks when hand-rubbed or by other friction, the black in a larger degree than any other colour, even the rapid motion of a fast retreating cat through rough, tangled underwood having been known to, produce a luminous effect. In frosty weather it is the more noticeable, the coldness of the weather apparently giving intensity and brilliancy, which to the ignorant would certainly be attributed to the interference of the spiritual or superhuman." Couple that with the nocturnal creature’s "glowing," light-reflective eyes? Now you’ve got even more of the stuff of superstition."
Source: NatureNow via PBS-LPB | Oct 18, 2018, 12:00AM |
"Halloween, or Hallowe'en also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. The word Halloween or Hallowe'en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin. The word "Hallowe'en" means "hallowed evening" or "holy evening." Today's Halloween customs are also thought to have been influenced by Christian dogma and practices derived from it. Halloween is the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day (also known as All Saints' or Hallowmas) on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November, thus giving the holiday on 31 October the full name of All Hallows' Eve (meaning the evening before All Hallows' Day). Since the time of the early Church, major feasts in the Christian Church (such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) had vigils which began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows.' These three days are collectively referred to as Allhallowtide and are a time for honoring the saints and praying for the recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven. All Saints was introduced in the year 609, but was originally celebrated on 13 May, the same date as Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead. In 835, it was officially switched to 1 November, the same date as Samhain, at the behest of Pope Gregory IV. Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" refers to "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling. John Pymm writes that "many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church." These feast days included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas, Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday. Mumming, practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, involved masked persons in fancy dress who "paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence. Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after supernatural figures such as vampires, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. Over time, in the United States the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses."
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"Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada. Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well. Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among almost all religions after harvests and at other times. The Thanksgiving holiday's history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation. It also has aspects of a harvest festival, even though the harvest in New England occurs well before the late November date on which the modern Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated. In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is commonly, but not universally, traced to a poorly documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving." Thanksgiving, currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941, has been an annual tradition in the United States by presidential proclamation since 1863."
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"Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States often regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. In recent years, most major retailers have opened extremely early and offered promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season, similar to Boxing Day sales in many Commonwealth nations. Black Friday is not a holiday, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day."
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"Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. The term "Cyber Monday" was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year."
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"Green Monday is an online retail industry term similar to Cyber Monday. The term was coined by eBay in 2007 to describe the best sales day in December, usually the second Monday of December. Green Monday is defined more specifically by business research organization comScore as the last Monday with at least 10 days prior to Christmas. In 2009, $854 million was spent online in the US on Green Monday, with sales in 2011 reaching $1.133 billion. In 2012, Green Monday topped out at $1.27 billion, up 13% from 2011 and the third heaviest online sales day for the season behind Cyber Monday according to comScore. In 2014, Green Monday online sales grossed a record $1.6 billion, albeit still lower than Cyber Monday's $2.68 billion during the same year." "This day is also heavily promoted with free shipping deals."
Source: Wikipedia.org |
"The dates of Hanukkah are determined by the Hebrew calendar. Hanukkah begins at the 25th day of Kislev, and concludes on the 2nd or 3rd day of Tevet (Kislev can have 29 or 30 days) The Jewish day begins at sunset, whereas the Gregorian calendar begins the day at midnight. Hanukkah begins at sunset of the date listed."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Thursday, January 11, 2024, 9:11PM CDT |
"Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santy, or simply Santa is a figure with legendary, historical and folkloric origins who, in many Western cultures, is said to bring gifts to the homes of the good children on 24 December, the night before Christmas Day. The modern figure of Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas, whose name is a dialectal pronunciation of Saint Nicholas, the historical Greek bishop and gift-giver of Myra. During the Christianization of Germanic Europe, this figure may have absorbed elements of the god Odin, who was associated with the Germanic pagan midwinter event of Yule and led the Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession through the sky. Santa Claus is generally depicted as a portly, joyous, white-bearded man—sometimes with spectacles—wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots and who carries a bag full of gifts for children. Images of him rarely have a beard with no moustache. This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of the 1823 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast.
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This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, children's books and films. Since the 20th century, in an idea popularized by the 1934 song "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," Santa Claus has been believed to make a list of children throughout the world, categorizing them according to their behavior ("naughty" or "nice") and to deliver presents, including toys, and candy to all of the well-behaved children in the world, and sometimes coal to the naughty children, on the single night of Christmas Eve. He accomplishes this feat with the aid of the elves who make the toys in the workshop and the flying reindeer who pull his sleigh. He is commonly portrayed as living at the North Pole and saying "ho ho ho" often. Saint Nicholas of Myra was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Empire, now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity.
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In continental Europe he is usually portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. The remains of Saint Nicholas are in Italy. In 1087, the Italian city of Bari mounted an expedition to locate the tomb of the Saint. The reliquary of St. Nicholas was conquered by Italian sailors and his relics were taken to Bari where they are kept to this day. Writing letters to Santa Claus has been a Christmas tradition for children for many years. These letters normally contain a wish list of toys and assertions of good behavior. Some social scientists have found that boys and girls write different types of letters. Girls generally write longer but more polite lists and express the nature of Christmas more in their letters than in letters written by boys. Girls also more often request gifts for other people. Many postal services allow children to send letters to Santa Claus. These letters may be answered by postal workers and/or outside volunteers. Writing letters to Santa Claus has the educational benefits of promoting literacy, computer literacy, and e-mail literacy. A letter to Santa is often a child's first experience of correspondence. Written and sent with the help of a parent or teacher, children learn about the structure of a letter, salutations, and the use of an address and postcode."
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