I noticed at Costco today that the Christmas decorations and seasonal toy assortment are being stocked. I thought, gee it sure seems early this year. And then I remembered it was August 5th, and realized it was right on schedule.
Only 141 more shopping days until Christmas.
But above all, Bastille Day, or the Fourteenth of July, is the symbol of the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic. The national holiday is a time when all citizens celebrate their membership to a republican nation. It is because this national holiday is rooted in the history of the birth of the Republic that it has such great significance.
… The people of Paris rose up and decided to march on the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the absolutism and arbitrariness of the Ancien Regime.
The storming of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, immediately became a symbol of historical dimensions; it was proof that power no longer resided in the King or in God, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by the Philosophes of the 18th century.
On July 16, the King recognized the tricolor cockade: the Revolution had succeeded.
For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille symbolizes, liberty, democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression.
NewMexiKen read many years ago that traffic fatalities were not particularly more significant on holiday weekends than any other days. Safety advocates just had us all thinking they were with their public service advertising campaigns and police check points.
A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety confirms this. For the period 1986 through 2002 there were an average of 117 traffic fatalities a day in the United States. And, while July 4 was the worst day of the year with an average of 161 fatalities, 158 people were killed on any given Saturday. July 4 is the only date in the year less safe than any Saturday.
The worst dates:
July 4 — 161
July 3 — 149
December 23 — 145
August 3 — 142
January 1 — 142
Days of the week:
Sunday — 132
Monday — 96
Tuesday — 95
Wednesday — 98
Thursday — 105
Friday — 133
Saturday — 158
Of course, maybe the holidays remain relatively safe because of all the attention placed on them.
Source: The New York Times
Today is Father’s Day, a holiday in this country that goes back to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother’s Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition too.
So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father’s birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father’s Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother’s Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father’s Day, not until 1972.
On this date in 1777 the Continental Congress approved a national flag:
Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.
In 1916 President Wilson issued a proclamation declaring June 14 Flag Day.
The present design of the flag was established in 1818 — thirteen stripes to represent the original states and a star for each state. The current flag with 50 stars was established on July 4, 1960, when Hawaii was admitted to the Union.
The Star Spangled Banner at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 had 15 stars and 15 stripes.
Dan Neil on the Harley culture and Memorial Day. A must read that includes this:
The trappings of Harley culture—the leather jackets with club colors, the Kaiser-style helmets, the tattoos, the beards like Arizona tumbleweeds—were established in the ’50s and ’60s, the heyday of outlaw motorcycle clubs such as the Hells Angels, which are still around and whose members, may I state clearly, are exemplary young men for whom I have nothing but the greatest admiration and fear.
The first bikers I ever met were, in fact, Angels, and they were total bad asses, the sort of guys who, after firmly planting the knife in your head, would attempt to kick the handle off.
Helpful Tips for Fighting and Winning the War on Easter by J. Chris Rock. Here’s two:
Tip No. 3
Have each member of your family write a letter every day to Just Born, Inc., makers of PEEPS. Suggest they make PALMS instead, marshmallow fronds that deliciously celebrate Christ’s triumphant return to Jerusalem. Great writing exercise for the kids!
Tip No. 5
Mothers, throw that “Easter” bonnet your child brought home from art class right in the trash. They’ll cry (trust me on this one), but tell them that if they really loved Mommy they’d make you a crown of thorns out of a paper plate.
NewMexiKen is, once again, retiring from the blogging world.
Now, you have to figure out if that is the April Fool, or if this time I really mean it and you won’t believe me and that is the April Fool.
Happy April Fool’s Day.
NewMexiKen assumes all his Irish children and grandchildren are wearing green today in honor or Ireland’s patron saint.
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you
In the palm of his hand.
Mardi Gras, literally “Fat Tuesday,” has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the “last hurrah” before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That’s why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of streetsweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.
…Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning “farewell to the flesh.” Like many Catholic holidays and seasonal celebrations, it likely has its roots in pre-Christian traditions based on the seasons. Some believe the festival represented the few days added to the lunar calendar to make it coincide with the solar calendar; since these days were outside the calendar, rules and customs were not obeyed. Others see it as a late-winter celebration designed to welcome the coming spring. As early as the middle of the second century, the Romans observed a Fast of 40 Days, which was preceded by a brief season of feasting, costumes and merrymaking.
Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras from American Catholic, which has more.
Shrove Tuesday is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of Lent. It’s a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins.
Shrove Tuesday is sometimes called Pancake Day after the fried batter recipe traditionally eaten on this day.
But there’s more to Shrove Tuesday than pigging out on pancakes or taking part in a public pancake race. The pancakes themselves are part of an ancient custom with deeply religious roots.
BBC – Religion & Ethics, which has more.
George Washington was born on February 11, 1731. In 1752, however, Britain and her colonies changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the calendar we use today. The change added 11 days and designated January rather than March as the beginning of the year. Accordingly, Washington’s birthday was February 22, 1732.
The federal holiday was celebrated on February 22 until legislation in 1968 designated the third Monday of February the official day to celebrate Washington’s birthday. In 1971, when the 1968 Act went into effect, President Nixon proclaimed the holiday Presidents’ Day, to commemorate all past presidents, not just Washington and Lincoln. This was never intended or authorized by Congress; even so, it gained a strong hold on the public consciousness.
The states are not obliged to adopt federal holidays, which only affect federal offices and agencies. While most states have adopted Washington’s Birthday, a dozen of them officially celebrate Presidents’ Day. A number of the states that celebrate Washington’s Birthday also recognize Lincoln’s Birthday as a separate legal holiday.
St. Valentine was supposedly a martyred 3rd century priest, not a shill for the flower industry or a marketing genius for a certain Kansas City, Mo., greeting-card titan. Still, with all due respect to his martyrdom, we think it’s high time the holiday bearing his name be abolished.
Call us hopeless romantics on this page, but we find that true love is overwhelming, irrepressible and spontaneous. Romance shouldn’t be confined to a particular day; nor need it be triggered by the arrival of Feb. 14. Compulsory love is an oxymoron.
Excerpt from a Los Angeles Times editorial
… was born on this date in 1929.
Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.
There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
So who gets the Christmas story better, the U.S. with Santa Claus on December 25th, or Latin America today, the Epiphany, with gifts from the three kings on El Día de Los Reyes?
Tonight, Thursday evening, is Twelfth Night (the eve of the Epiphany).
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.
And don’t forget to take full advantage of today’s leap second (5:00 PM MST).
NewMexiKen is in the San Francisco area for Christmas. Christmas Eve afternoon we went to Union Square in The City to see the lights, the beautiful white pine Christmas tree, the puppies and kittens in Macy’s window, and all the people. It was wonderful, people of every type celebrating — whether they were celebrating Christmas or some other holiday seemed of no consequence. That they were together sharing the sites seemed all that was important.
Later, a thousand miles away in Taos, New Mexico, John Farr describes an entirely different, but equally pleasing holiday scene:
I just stepped outside, around midnight. It was about 20 degrees and breezy, no snow. The Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon (!). A hand-rung church bell was tolling in the distance. There were coyotes howling loudly very close by.
We had posole and tortillas for dinner. Later today we’ll go out to the Pueblo for the deer dance. Not half bad at all…
Wherever you are, whomever you’re with, Merry Christmas to you.
From The Miami Herald [2003 — no link]:
Before White Christmas, the holidays meant traditional carols and religious hymns. After it, secular tunes became part of the fiber of popular culture.
Rosen estimates 125 million copies of the three-minute song have been sold since it was first recorded in 1942.
”Is there another song that Kenny G, Peggy Lee, Mantovani, Odetta, Loretta Lynn, the Flaming Lips, the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the Backstreet Boys have in common?” writes Rosen. “What other tune links Destiny’s Child, The Three Tenors and Alvin and the Chipmunks; Perry Como, Garth Brooks and Stiff Little Fingers; the Reverend James Cleveland, Doris Day and Kiss?”
And Crosby’s performance marks a turning point in the music industry.
”It marks the moment when performers supplant songwriters as the central creative forces at least in mainstream American pop music,” he told NPR in 2002. “After the success of White Christmas, records become the primary means of disseminating pop music, and they replace sheet music. And the emphasis shifts to charismatic performances recorded for all time and preserved on records….”
Some facts about the “hit of hits”:
• Bing Crosby first performed White Christmas on Dec. 25, 1941, on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall radio show.
• Crosby first recorded the song for Decca on May 29, 1942. He rerecorded it March 19, 1947, as a result of damage to the 1942 master from frequent use. As in 1942, Crosby was joined in the studio by the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers.
• The song was featured in two films: Holiday Inn in 1942 (for which it collected the Academy Award for best song) and 12 years later in White Christmas.
• Crosby’s single sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was recognized as the bestselling single in any music category until 1998 when Elton John’s tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind, overtook it.
• Irving Berlin so hated Elvis Presley’s cover of White Christmas that he launched a fierce (and fruitless) campaign to ban Presley’s recording.
by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), 1906.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two
at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and
the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent
imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
… was first published on this date in 1843.
Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
When I was a child, I tell my offspring, my brother and I often would receive just one present at Christmastime, typically an individual crayon. It wouldn’t even be a full crayon, but merely a stub. Still, we’d be grateful and would pretend that “brown” was our favorite of the 64 Crayola colors. We would talk about how great this crayon would be if only we could afford paper.