Category: Holidays

Best Thanksgiving lines of the day, so far

The turkey-pardoning is supposed to be a long-running national tradition, but it officially only goes back to George (the Good One) Bush and 1989. Since Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s particularly rich in long-running traditions, 20 years barely counts as an impulsive gesture.

If we want a political tradition, we can do better. Let’s all just gather around the family computer and watch that video of Sarah Palin discussing Thanksgiving in front of a bloody turkey abattoir.

Gail Collins

Best line of Thanksgiving Eve

“Today, I am pleased to announce that thanks to the interventions of Malia and Sasha — because I was planning to eat this sucker — ‘Courage’ will also be spared this terrible and delicious fate.”

President Obama, who went on:

“You know, there are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office. And then there are moments like this where I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland.”

Silent Night

“It’s so close you can taste it. In just a few hours time, we begin Holiday season–or, as we at the Law Blog like to call it, Establishment Clause season. Yes, it’s that time of year, kids, when we rejoice in our right to argue about the legality of religious displays in the public realm.”

Law Blog – WSJ

The Law Blog goes on to discuss a Third Circuit ruling in a case concerning whether prohibiting religious Christmas music was a violation of the neutrality toward religion required by the First Amendment. It isn’t.

Proof That You Hate Christmas Creep

When do you think it is appropriate for stores to start decorating for
and promoting the winter holidays?

Before Labor Day 1%
Between Labor Day and Halloween 5%
Between Halloween and Thanksgiving 36%
After Thanksgiving 54%
Never 1%
Don’t Celebrate Holidays 1%
Don’t Know 1%
Refused to Answer 1%

Source: Consumer Reports National Research Center

The Consumerist

Before Labor Day? Those are the people that leave their Christmas lights hanging all year.

Columbus Day

NewMexiKen is well aware of the feelings among many American Indians and others about Columbus Day. One Lakota woman who worked for me used to ask if—as a protest—she could come in and work on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

My feeling is that we can’t have enough holidays and so I choose to think of Columbus Day as the Italian-American holiday. Nothing wrong with that. We have an African-American holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We have the Irish-American celebration that is St. Patrick’s Day. And Cinco de Mayo is surely the Mexican-American holiday, a much larger celebration here than in most of Mexico.

So, instead of protesting Columbus Day, perhaps American Indians should lobby to bring about a holiday of their own. Given the great diversity among Indian nations, the tribes might never reach agreement, though, so NewMexiKen will suggest a date.

The day before Columbus Day.

Bastille Day

July 14th is Bastille Day in France, a national holiday. Even Google gets in on the act (google.fr, that is— image is from 2008).

Google Bastille Day

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.

Embassy of France

Memorial Day

May 30th was Memorial Day (or Decoration Day) for over 100 years beginning in 1868.

The observance was changed to the last Monday in May by law in 1971.

Decoration Day

In 1868, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

The first national celebration of the holiday took place May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day. In many American towns, the day is celebrated with a parade. …

In 1971, federal law changed the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended it to honor all soldiers who died in American wars. A few states continue to celebrate Memorial Day on May 30.

Library of Congress

The flag today

“Protocol for flying the American flag on Memorial Day includes raising it quickly to the top of the pole at sunrise, immediately lowering it to half-staff until noon, and displaying it at full staff from noon until sunset.”

Library of Congress

Flying the flag but doing it improperly is, to my mind, worse than not flying it at all. Symbols and all.

The holiday is Washington’s Birthday, not Presidents’ Day

The federal holiday today — the reason there is no mail delivery — is Washington’s Birthday.*

If there had been a calendar on the wall the day George Washington was born, it would have read February 11, 1731. In 1752, Britain and her colonies converted 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 became February 22, 1732.

The federal holiday was celebrated on February 22 from its approval in 1879** 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.

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg has more and there is a history of the making of the holiday in By George, IT IS Washington’s Birthday!.

14 weeks until the next holiday.

* There is no state holiday today in New Mexico. The state chooses to celebrate Presidents’ Day the day after Thanksgiving.

** Washington’s Birthday was the fifth federal holiday. Only New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day preceded it.

On the 12th Day of Christmas

Though advertisers and merchants would have us believe that the Christmas season begins at Thanksgiving (or possibly Halloween, or even Labor Day), liturgically it begins on Christmas Eve and extends until Twelfth Night, the eve of the Epiphany.

The Twelve Days of Christmas are Christmas through January 5th. Tonight is Twelfth night.

The Gift of the Magi

This is a Christmas season perennial here at NewMexiKen. Go ahead, read it again. It makes everything about the season seem simpler yet more precious.

Merry Christmas!

The Gift of the Magi
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.

Continue reading The Gift of the Magi

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

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.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

From an October 26, 2000, article in The New York Times:

Every Christmas for more than 150 years, children have hung their stockings by the chimney with care and learned to thank Clement Clarke Moore for the tradition.

Moore, a wealthy Manhattan biblical scholar, went down in history as the man who in 1823 created the American image of Santa Claus as author of the “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” Better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” it became one of the most widely read poems in the world.

But did Moore really write it? In a new study of the poem’s early history, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution, accuses Moore of committing literary fraud. He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem’s spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.

In a new book, “Author Unknown,” (Henry Holt & Company) Mr. Foster argues that “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” first published anonymously in a Troy, N.Y., newspaper in 1823, closely matches the views and verse of Henry Livingston Jr., a gentleman-poet of Dutch descent.

The article goes on to explain Professor Foster’s findings.

The Writer’s Almanac in 2003 also discussed the poem and its origins at length.

Today is Christmas Eve, the subject of the beloved holiday poem that begins:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

The poem, now known as “The Night Before Christmas,” was first published anonymously in a small newspaper in Upstate New York in 1823, and its original title was “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” It was a huge success, and it has been published in book form so many times that it now exists in more editions than any other Christmas book ever printed.

Fourteen years after its first publication, an editor attributed the poem to a wealthy professor of classical literature named Clement Clarke Moore. At first, Moore dismissed the poem as a trifle, but he eventually included it in a volume of his collected Poems (1844). A legend grew that Moore had been inspired to write the poem for his children during a sleigh ride home on Christmas Eve in 1822, and that he had based his version of Saint Nicholas on his Dutch chauffeur.

Recently, new evidence has come out that a Revolutionary War major named Henry Livingston Jr. may have been the actual author of “The Night Before Christmas.” His family has letters describing his recitation of the poem before it was originally published, and literary scholars have found many similarities between his work and “The Night Before Christmas.” He was also three quarters Dutch, and many of the details in the poem, including names of the reindeer, have Dutch origins.

But whoever wrote the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” changed the way Americans celebrate the holiday of Christmas by reinventing the character of Santa Claus. The name Santa Claus comes from Sinter Klaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. He was a bishop in Southwest Turkey in the 4th century and had a reputation for extraordinary generosity. He became known as the patron saint of children, and many European children began to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve on December 5th. On that day in Hungary, children leave boots out for St. Nicholas to fill with presents. In Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, children are visited by a man in bishop’s robes who listens to prayers and gives presents. In Holland, St. Nicholas arrives by steamboat from Spain, and travels around the country on a white horse, tossing gifts down chimneys.

“The Night Before Christmas” combined the celebrations of St. Nicholas Day and Christmas, and made children the focus of Christmas celebrations. The poem was also the first representation of Santa Claus as a magical, elf-like being who travels through the air on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.

After the publication of the poem, the ritual of gift giving became a boon to merchants, and they became Santa’s biggest fans. Stores began to launch Christmas advertising campaigns on Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving Day parades first began as Christmas shopping promotions. In 1939, the retail business community persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to set the annual date of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, which ensured a four-week shopping season each year. Retailers now count on Christmas for more than 50 percent of their annual sales. In Holland, children are now visited by St. Nicholas on December 5th, and on Christmas Eve they are visited by Santa Claus, whom they call, “American Christmas Man.”