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Major HolidaysNew Year’s • Valentine’s
Day • Easter • Passover •
Mother’s Day • Father’s Day
•
New Year’s is the world’s oldest and most widely observed holiday. Evidence of New Year’s gifts and messages has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to the 6th century B.C. Early Romans are also known to have exchanged gifts symbolizing good will, including pictures on terra cotta tablets accompanied by inscriptions wishing a happy and prosperous New Year. The earliest known holiday greeting cards appeared around 1450 in Germany. Cards from woodcuts were the most prevalent, and often involved the Christ Child bearing good wishes for an auspicious New Year. By 1770, greeting cards had evolved from woodcuts to finely printed messages, and engravers and printers supplied continental Europe with vast quantities of New Year’s cards. In modern times, the New Year holiday has become an integral part of the holiday season, and New Year’s cards are a popular expression of hope for the future, used by businesses and individuals alike. - Back to Top - Tradition holds that the first Valentine was sent in 270 A.D. by St. Valentine on the eve of his execution for refusing to renounce Christianity. Actually a note of appreciation to his jailer’s blind daughter for bringing him food and delivering messages during his incarceration, it was signed "from your Valentine.” The Romans celebrated St. Valentine’s Day as the Feast of Lupercalia, dedicated to the pastoral god Lupercus and to the Goddess of Love, Juno. Roman maidens placed their names in an urn set up in the public square and courageous bachelors drew from it to obtain their "blind date" for the coming year. The Christian Church denounced these "love lotteries" as pagan rituals. During the Middle Ages, love lotteries persisted in France as "chance boxes" that allotted couples one year to get married or part company. In England, men wore the name of the girl they drew on their sleeve, encircled with a heart. Written Valentines appeared around the year 1400 as quaint love missives, often given anonymously. By the 1700s, the familiar "roses are red, violets are blue…" verses were popular, and by the 1850s, the French began to ornament their Valentines cards with gilt paper, ribbons, lace and other intricate embellishments. The first Valentines in America were exchanged during the Revolutionary days and were mostly handmade with sentimental verses written in flowing script. In 1840, Miss Esther Howland, an imaginative artist and entrepreneur, became the first regular publisher of valentines in the United States, eventually heading her own publishing firm that specialized in Valentine cards. - Back to Top - Easter commemorates the Resurrection of Christ and is the most sacred of holy days on the Christian ecclesiastical calendar. It is classified as a "movable feast" meaning that it is a religious celebration that changes its date each year. The rabbit and the egg are the most popular illustrations for Easter cards. The Easter Bunny originates from pre-Christian legends, in which rabbits were used to symbolize new life. The custom of decorating Easter eggs dates back to the Middle Ages. - Back to Top - Passover celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and begins on the fifteenth of the month of Nisan on the Jewish calendar in the Spring, and continues for seven days. The name derives from the story when, during the tenth and ultimate plague inflicted on Pharaoh, God passed over the Israelites and struck down only the Egyptian first-born. That night, Pharaoh agreed to let the Israelites go. - Back to Top - Each year, the second Sunday in May is celebrated as Mother’s Day, a holiday initiated by Anna M. Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia in 1907 to honor her mother. Ms. Jarvis spent a good part of her life, after the death of her mother, in a crusade to have the date declared a national holiday. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressional resolution declaring, "The American mother is the greatest source of the country’s strength and inspiration." - Back to Top - Mrs. John Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Washington was the founder of Father’s Day in 1910. She was one of six brothers and sisters raised by their father, William Smart, a following their mother’s death. Mrs. Dodd organized the first Father’s Day celebration, held in Seattle, and pushed for broader observance of the holiday. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father’s Day be observed throughout the nation as a holiday. - Back to Top - Rosh Hashanah is the first two days of the Jewish month of Tishri (in the Fall), and is considered the celebration of the beginning of the Jewish New Year. It was referred to in the Torah as the Day of Remembering and was not called Rosh Hashanah– the New Year – until Talmudic times. Yom Kippur falls on the tenth of Tishri on the Jewish calendar and brings to close the ten days of repentance and atonement begun with Rosh Hashanah. It is the most solemn day of the Jewish year. - Back to Top - The Halloween observance originated with the Celtic Druids in 700 B.C. The Druids believed that the souls of the dead returned to inhabit the bodies of the living on October 31. Villagers donned masks and costumes and paraded to the outskirts of town to trick roving spirits into leaving. October 31 was later incorporated into the Christian calendar as All Hallow’s Eve, honoring martyrs and saints. Children wearing costumes offered to fast for departed souls in exchange for money or an offering. Irish Catholics fleeing from the potato famine in the 1840s introduced the Halloween observance to the United States, including the practice of carving jack-o’ lanterns. - Back to Top - The autumn following their 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims held a feast to gave thanks after gathering their first harvest, inviting the local Indians to share in the celebration. This observance is commonly recognized as the first official Thanksgiving in America. The day has become a time to count our blessings and give thanks. The family-oriented American holiday is steeped in tradition, from the festive dinner with all the trimmings to watching the annual Thanksgiving parade and football games. - Back to Top - Hanukkah is the most historically documented of the Jewish holidays from the First and Second Books of the Maccabees and in the works of Josephus and later accounts in the Talmud. The story is one of the victory of the brave Maccabees against the Greeks and of the miracle of the cruse of oil that burned for eight days instead of one. The major ritual for the holiday is the lighting of one light of the menorah each night of Hanukkah after sundown, beginning with the 25th of Kislev on the Jewish calendar (December). While a tradition of giving Hanukkah gelt – money – is an old one, the proximity to Christmas has made gift giving an intrinsic part of the holiday. - Back to Top - Christmas is the only religious holiday in America that is also a legal holiday. December 25 was selected as the date to observe Christmas by Pope Julius in 349 A.D. While the legend of Santa Claus dates back to the 4th-century figure of St. Nicholas, Santa Claus did not become a popular American folk hero until 1822, when Dr. Clement Clarke Moore wrote "A visit from St. Nicholas" for his children. In 1863, cartoonist Thomas Nast used Moore’s description to draw a Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly magazine. This became the model for Santa Claus that most artists use today. The first Christmas card was produced by London artist John Horsley in 1843, the same year that "A Christmas Carol" was written. The card, created for London businessman Henry Cole, added "Happy New Year" to its message of "Merry Christmas". - Back to Top - Kwanzaa is a seven-day observance stressing the unity of the African-American family. It means "first fruits of the harvest" in Swahili. The holiday was created by Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga, Chair of Black Studies at California State University, and is celebrated December 26-January 1st. Each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the seven Passerines of Kwanzaa, each intended to serve as a guide for daily living: unity, self-determination, collective work & responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. This is a time when families share symbolic dinners and exchange handmade gifts with an ethnic theme. - Back to Top - |
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