The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.  

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.  

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.  

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.  

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.  

The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.  

So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it. 
 

Veteran’s Day. (Nov. 11) 

This is my tribute to my father, and to all veterans. I thank God every day for him and veterans like him, without whom we wouldn't have the freedoms we've grown accustomed to. Freedoms that too many Americans take for granted. War is a horrible thing, and I in no way am attempting to glorify it. However, in some cases it is necessary.  

My father is a World War II veteran. Joining the Navy when he was just 17, he was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Pensacola (CA-24), where he served bravely until the war's end in 1945. The Pensacola was a heavy cruiser, part of the screen of ships protecting the carrier U.S.S. Hornet, and later the Enterprise. The Pensacola saw much action, and earned 13 Battle Stars for her part in 13 major battles fought in the Pacific, including Midway, Iwo Jima, and Guadalcanal. 

The Pensacola's armament consisted of 20mm and 40mm anti-aircraft guns, and 5 inch and 8 inch guns. My father was a gunner on a 5 inch mount. The 5 inch guns were multi-purpose, used for ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, and anti-aircraft. My father has related to me that his scariest moments were during Kamikaze attacks, when the enemy planes had to be literally "blown from the sky", or centrifigul force would carry them into the ship. Fortunately, no Kamikaze planes hit the Pensacola, but she was strafed, bombed, shelled, and torpedoed. 

She survived the war, only to be sunk off the coast of Washington State during nuclear bombardment testing in the late '40s. An unmagnanimouse end to a grand career. She was a proud ship, and her officers and crew fought with unwavering courage. 

As an aside, I just want to say that I abhor the treatment our Vietnam Veterans have received by this country. Vietnam was a "dirty" war in my opinion, created I believe, by miss-guided politicians. The men and women who fought there were simply doing their duty, answering the call from our armed forces. In my eyes they are all heroes. I salute you! 

Thanksgiving! (4th Thursday in November) 

Find Out What You Know About Thanksgiving!

This page is dedicated to the holiday that encourages us to step back and give thanks for all the blessings we have. On this holiday site, you will discover some unusual things about the history of Thanksgiving, and you can take a fun little quiz to find out how much you know.  

Take the quiz first, then read about the history of Thanksgiving to find out about the answers you missed! When you're finished, I would appreciate it if you would sign the guestbook to let me know what you learned! 
 
 

Pearl Harbor Day (December 7)  

 

In Memoriam:

At dawn on Sunday, December 7, 1941, naval aviation forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet center at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and other military targets. The goal of this attack was to sufficiently cripple the US Fleet so that Japan could then attack and capture the Phillipines and Indo-China and so secure access to the raw materials needed to maintain its position as a global military and economic power. This would enable Japan to further extend the empire to include Australia, New Zealand, and India (the ultimate boundaries planned for the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere"). The prevailing belief within the Japanese military and political establishment was that eventually, with the then expected German defeat of Great Britain and Soviet Russia, the United States' non-involvement in the European war, and Japan's control of the Pacific, that the world power structure would stabilize into three major spheres of influence:

Christmas (December 25)

 

     At Christmas, people remember when Jesus Christ was born and the Christian religion started. Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem, about two thousands years ago. The people who followed Jesus' teaching were the first Christians.

Today, Christmas is a very important time in the Christian year, but it is also very important to those who do not go to church. It is a time for buying and giving presents, having parties, and being with family. 

People start to get ready for Christmas in late October or early November. Shop - keepers decorate their shops with lights, trees and other decorations, and shoppers start to look for presents. Shops get very busy and stay open later. People with family and friends in other countries often send them cards and presents, and everyone begins to make plans for the coming holiday.

Many children have parties at school, and many adults have parties at work in December. Most people have 25 and 26 December off work, and many have a week off, from 25 December to 1 January. They usually spend this time at home with their family or visiting family who live far away. 

The Christmas holiday begins on 24 December: Christmas Eve. People often stop work early and have a drink together, or finish their Christmas a shopping. They cover the presents in special papers, and put them under the tree. 

Many people go to church at midnight on Christmas Eve. They hear the Christmas story and sing carols. 

Christmas Day ( 25 December ) is a holiday. Children usually wake up very early. They look in their stockings to see what Santa put there for them. After breakfast they open their other presents around the tree. 

Christmas dinner is in the afternoon and is the biggest meal of the day. Before they start to eat, people pull crackers. The crackers make a loud noise, and have a small game and paper party hat inside. 

Dinner is usually turkey with lots of winter vegetables and then hot mince pies or a Christmas pudding. 

At three o'clock many people in Britain turn their televisions on because the Queen say

"Happy Christmas " to everyone. 

A lot of people go for a walk in the afternoon or play with their new games.

In the evening, people eat cold meat, and Christmas cake ( a kind of fruit cake ), fruit and nuts, but they are usually not very hungry because of t5heir big dinner. 

Another British Christmas tradition is the pantomime. A pantomime is a kind of play with a children's story ( like Cinderella or Aladdin ) and lots of music and songs. Children like pantomimes because they can join in and make a lot of noise. They often go with their school or family. 

The Christmas season ends on the twelfth day after 25 December, which is 6 January. Most people take down their Christmas trees and decorations by this date, and some people think it is bad luck not to do that. 
 
 

I. The moral lessons given us by Jesus.

      Celebrating Easter, seeing the happy faces of people around, hearing the joyful announcements “Christ is risen”, and, on the whole, enjoining these God-blessed sunny spring days, let us pause for a moment and ponder on some of the moral lessons given us by Jesus.

      We well know that Christianity is ethical through and through, but strange as it may seem, the moral teaching of Christ himself is not very circumstantial. On the contrary, He appears rather terse on these matters, and it is in His deeds, not words, that the larger part of His mission found its expression. As a person, with all His inclinations and intentions, He does not seem to be a determined moral reformer, not to speak of a revolutionary; and he was not in the least a scholar or a man of letters. He wrote nothing. He mowed quietly and slowly along the highways and among the villages of Galilee and Judea and spoke to people not about any intricate problems of human existence, or theology, or the mysteries of life and death, but about things which belonged to the realm of daily life; and the words he chose for that were the words of common men, not those of a professor of ethics.

      He summed up His “theology” in an amazingly short and simple phrase “God is love”; and meeting people He very often did not teach them, as He actually did from time to time, but offered them a ready sympathy and understanding, even to the degraded and the outcast. To them He spoke in the language of tolerance and benevolence, forgiveness and mercy. That was His love – and that was the beginning of the moral revolution that transformed the world. 

II. When is a Easter?

      The greatest Christian festival of the year is Easter. It is either in March or in April, and millions of people joyously observe Christ’s resurrection. This holy day never comes before March 22 or after April 25.

      When is an Easter? That, of course, is celebrated on the first Sunday after the paschal moon, which is the first full moon that occurs on or next after the vernal equinox, March, 21^st. So all you need to do is look at the sky? Afraid not. For the moon in question is not the real moon, but a hypothetical moon. This one goes round the earth one month in 29 days, the next in 30 days, though with certain modifications to make the date of both the real and fictional full moons coincide as nearly as possible. It yields a date for Easter that can be as early as March 22^nd and as late as April 25^th. Today, Easters variability suits antiquarians, and the makers of pocket diaries, many of which devote a Full page to the calculation of Easter in perpetuity. But, nearly 1,700 years on, it does not suit those in (mostly European) countries such as Britain and Germany where both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. Early Easters are too cold to enjoy. Late Easters are jammed up against the May Day public holiday. 

III. Eastertide.

      Passion Sunday or Care Sunday two Sundays before Easter, is still known as Carling Sunday in parts of the north of England. Carlings are small dried peas, which are soaked in water overnight and then fried in an almost dry pan – when they start to burst they are ready. Greengrocers sell them, pubs serve them, and people eat them at home in a basin with a small piece of butter and plenty of pepper and salt. There seems to be no good reason, apart from the strength of the tradition, why they are eaten on this day. 

      Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter; for people near Marlborough in Wiltshire it meant following a long-established custom in which willow hazel sprays – representing palm – were carried up Martinsell Hill.

      Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter: the ‘royal maundy’ describes the gift which for the last five hundred ears or so has been given out by the sovereign on Maundy Thursday to as many men and woman as there are years in his or her age. Once it was clothing which was given out, now it is a sum of money; on odd – numbered years the ceremony usually takes place at Westminster Abbey, in even – numbered ones at a church or cathedral elsewhere in the country – though 1989 seems to have been an exception, for the distribution took place at Birmingham Cathedral in honor of the centenary of the city’s incorporation.

      On Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, hot cross buns are always eaten as a sign of remembrance, and in some baker’s shops and supermarkets they are on sale for many weeks before. It is a nationwide tradition, though hot cross buns were unknown in some places – Bath, for example – until the twentieth century. The buns may in fact pre – date Christianity, since bread consecrated to the Roman gods was marked with lines intersecting at right angels.

      People celebrate the holiday according to the beliefs and their religious denominations. Christians commemorate Good Friday as the day that Jesus Christ died and Easter Sunday as the day that He was resurrected. Protestant settlers brought the custom of a sunrise service, a religious gathering at dawn, to the United States.

      Today on Easter Sunday, children wake up to find that the Easter Bunny has left them baskets of candy. He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier that week. Children hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighborhoods and organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.

      In England, children rolled eggs down hills on Easter morning, a game which has been connected to the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ’s tomb when He was resurrected. British settlers brought this custom to the New World.

      One unusual Easter Sunday tradition can be seen at Radley, near Oxford, where parishioners ‘clip’ or embrace their church – they join hands and make a human chain round it. It is Easter Monday, however, which sees a veritable wealth of traditional celebrations throughout the country: to name bat’ a few, there is morris dancing in many tows, including a big display at Thaxted in Essex; orange rolling, perhaps a descendant of egg roiling, which takes place on Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire; and for perhaps eight hundred years or more there has been a distribution of food at the Kent village of Biddenden, ten miles from Ashford.

      Then there is Leicestershire’s famous hare – pie scramble and bottle – kicking which also takes place on Easter Monday; and another custom kept up in many parts of England and Wales and called ‘lifting’ or ‘heaving’ was taken by some to symbolize Christ’s resurrection. On Easter Monday the men lifted any woman they could find, and the women reciprocated the following day; the person was taken by the four limbs and lifted three times to shoulder height. When objections were made that this was ‘a rude, indecent and dangerous diversion’ a chair bedecked with ribbons and flowers was used instead – it was lifted with its victim, turned three times, and put down.

The Easter parade.

      The origin of this very picturesque traditional occasion, known affectionately as Easter Parade and starting at 3 o’clock in the afternoon of Easter Sunday, is not as remote, or mysterious, as many of the traditions and customs of England; there is no religious, or superstitious significance attached to it whatsoever.

      In 1858 Queen Victoria gave it the ultimate cachet of respectability and class by paying it a state visit in the spring. For the occasion she wore, of course, a new spring bonnet and gown. This set the fashion for a display each spring of the newest fashions in millinery and gowns, and from then onwards that traditions has expanded; every society lady vied with her rivals to appear in something more spectacular than anything that had seen before. 

IV. Easter egg and Easter hare.

      An egg has a symbolical meaning in many centuries. It’s well known that eggs had a special significance even in the times of ancient Romans. Eggs were their first disk during meals (“ab ovo”) and they were also in the center of competition as a memory of Zeus’s sons, who hatched from eggs. Such competition took place in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Eggs was a sign of hope, life fertility even in the early epoch. In Christianity, the Lord’s gift, which has begun in Jesus Christ. Eggs’ spreading as the Easter symbols turned to be possible because they sewed as an original rent or as a tax. The Easter was one of the days when this pay could be accomplished.

      Excavations witness that traditions of paintings on eggs have been existing for 5000 years and have their regional peculiarities. Especially in Slavonic countries eggs are decorated with many colored pictures of Christian motives. As expensive souvenirs it was a habit to give eggs made of noble metals, marble, was and wood.

      The Easter hare, which, children believe, brings the Easter eggs, may be understood as a transformed Easter lamb. In those places, where there was no sheepbreeding, a hare substituted for a sheep in the Raster meal. Due to its ability not to sleep the hare become a symbol of resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

      Easter Eggs.

      Wherever Easter is celebrated, there Easter eggs are usually to be found. In their modern form, they are frequently artificial, mere imitations of the real thing, made of chocolate or marzipan or sugar, or of two pieces of coloured and decorated cardboard fitted together to make an eggs-shaped case containing some small gift. These are the Easter eggs of commerce, which now appear in shop-windows almost as soon as, and sometimes even before, Ash Wednesday is past, and by so doing lose much of their original festival significance.

      This is a real egg, hard-boiled, died in bright colours, and sometimes elaborately decorated. In still appears upon countless breakfast-tables on Eater Day, or is hidden about the house and garden for the children to find. In some European countries, including England, the Easter Hare is said to bring the Easter eggs, and to conceal them in odd corners of the gardens, stables, or outbuildings.

      Because eggs are obvious symbols of continuing life and resurrection, the pagan peoples of ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Persia used them, centuries before tile first Easter Day, at the great Spring Festivals, when the revival of all things in Nature was celebrated.

      Colouring and decorating the festival eggs seems to have been customary since time immemorial. And old Polish legend says that Our Lady herself painted eggs red, blue, and green to amuse the Infant Jesus, and that since then all good polish mothers have done the same at Easter. A Romanian tale says that the vivid red shade, which is a favorite almost everywhere, represents the blood of Christ.

      There are many ways of tinting and decorated the eggs, some simple and some requiring a high degree of skill. They can be dipped into a prepared dye or, more usually boiled in it, or they may be boiled inside a covering of onion-peel. Ordinary commercial dyes are often used today for coloring, but originally only natural ones, obtained from flowers, leaves, mosses, bark, wood-chips, or other sources, were employed. In England, gorse-blossom was commonly used for yellow, cochineal for scarlet, and logwood-chips for a rich purple.