Festivals Related Quotes

It is the duty of the United Nations, is to make every international border a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.

ITS NOT FUNNY!" "You're right," agreed Sydney. "It's no funny. It's hilarious." We were back at Raymond's house, in the privacy of our room. It had taken forever for us to get away form the fireside festivities, particularly after learning a terrible fact about a Keeper custom. Well, I thought it was terrible, at least. It truned out that if someone wanted to marry domeone else around here, the prospectimve bride and groom each had to battle it out with the other's nearest relative of the same sex. Angeline had spotted Joshua's interest from the moment I'd arrived, and when she'd seen the bracelet, she'd assumed some sort of arragement has been made.

Line of control should be a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.

The 10 ever greatest misplacements in life: 1. Leadership without character. 2. Followership without servant-being. 3. Brotherhood without integrity. 4. Affluence without wisdom. 5. Authority without conscience. 6. Relationship without faithfullness. 7. Festivals without peace. 8. Repeated failure without change. 9. Good wealth without good health. 10. Love without a lover.

Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason. The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless. Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other. Before the age of reason the child receives images, not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations.

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead. And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being "out of fashion," not only do they add beauty to our daily lives they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial.

Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He’d always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He’d enjoyed seeing ancient relatives, he’d enjoyed the food, he’d been good at games like Chase My Neighbor up the Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a special festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender. Listening to his wizards was like watching someone kick apart a doll’s house.

Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth.

A twelve-year-old boy he could relate to. A wife who closely resembled someone he fell in love with, he could deal with. But a fifteen-year-old girl was like an alien species.

Since the festival had started, I had been taking note of a potential hostile that Amena had been associating with. Evidence was mounting up and my threat assessment was nearing critical. Things like: (1) he had informed her that his age was comparable to hers, which was just below the local standard for legal adult, but my physical scan and public record search indicated that he was approximately twelve Preservation standard calendar years older, (2) he never approached her when any family members or verified friends were with her, (3) he stared at her secondary sexual characteristics when her attention was elsewhere, (4) he encouraged her to take intoxicants that he wasn’t ingesting himself, (5) her parental and other related humans all assumed she was with her friends when she was seeing him and her friends all assumed she was with family and she hadn’t told either group about him, (6) I just had a bad feeling about the little shit.

Swine are held by the Egyptians to be unclean beasts. In the first place, if an Egyptian touches a hog in passing, he goes to the river and dips himself in it, clothed as he is; and in the second place, swineherds, though native born Egyptians, are alone of all men forbidden to enter any Egyptian temple; nor will any give a swineherd his daughter in marriage, nor take a wife from their women; but swineherds intermarry among themselves. [2] Nor do the Egyptians think it right to sacrifice swine to any god except the Moon and Dionysus; to these, they sacrifice their swine at the same time, in the same season of full moon; then they eat the meat. The Egyptians have an explanation of why they sacrifice swine at this festival, yet abominate them at others; I know it, but it is not fitting that I relate it. [3] But this is how they sacrifice swine to the Moon: the sacrificer lays the end of the tail and the spleen and the caul together and covers them up with all the fat that he finds around the belly, then consigns it all to the fire; as for the rest of the flesh, they eat it at the time of full moon when they sacrifice the victim; but they will not taste it on any other day. Poor men, with but slender means, mold swine out of dough, which they then take and sacrifice. (2:47)

Stannard believes that by the end of the 16th century, the Spanish had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of between 60 and 80 million indigenous people in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Even if one were to discount the millions of deaths resulting from diseases, this would still make the Spanish conquest of the New World the greatest act of genocide in recorded history. These types of numbers, which are subject to considerable academic debate, are often overlooked during Columbus Day parades and related festivities.

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment?

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival’s democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It’s hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related. It is also loud, and a good percentage of the total noise is masticatory.

A marriage is a private bond between two people. But a wedding is a party for everyone, a celebration of life and love, a gathering of friends and relatives to rejoice in life’s good food, champagne, dancing, laughter, and a golden moment in the passage of life. A marriage lasts years, through the good times and bad, and all the banal, boring everyday goings-on of living. A wedding is a brief flash, a unique, exceptional festivity with singing and flowers and good will among men—and women. A marriage is real life. A wedding is a fairy tale. But a wedding is also a promise that we will hold dear the joys of the fairy tale close to our hearts as we go through the years of our marriage.

Prepare yourself for Eid Wear new clothes of kindness, and never wear off Scent yourself with the perfume of love, and spread it everywhere Keep the sweet on the tongue and distribute it by heart to everyone Open Your Arms wide, hug everyone tight, Ego, anger, superiority, free your soul with these all to friends, to relatives, to strangers, gift beautiful feelings to all

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead.

At the festival of Easter, when we remember the Passion of Christ, the rooster signifies the Resurrection. Are you aware that the Cross, now the generally accepted symbol of Christianity, appeared only relatively recently, in the mid-fifth century? Until that time, Christians used other symbols, very frequently a rooster, which is an image of the Son of God Who came to awaken mankind.

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

I grew up in a relatively small town...Cruising up and down the main street in a car, going to the mall and attending drunken date-rape festivals called "parties" were the culmination of social interaction. I was never entirely comfortable in this setting. Until I was eighteen and left 'home," I was constantly at odds with this culture I grew up in. The older I got, the more clearly I saw what was supposed to be looming ahead for me as a woman. This conflict became increasingly unsettling with each passing year. I did not want to keep my mouth shut and act ladylike...or respect the idea that all of my teachers were smarter than me. Dealing with such opposition on a day-to-day basis disrupted the momentum of womanpower I was born with. I struggled to keep my power somewhat apace with my life. This proved difficult, as I expended a large amount of energy defending my own concept of the woman I wanted to be. Furthermore, deprived of the experience I needed in order to know exactly what "the woman I wanted to be" meant, things were not only difficult, but mind-bogglingly complex as well.

My time at Parklife got me thinking about drug users who do not have access to such drug-related services and education. The amount of money required to attend a festival, especially when entrance ticket, travel, and food costs are included, is prohibitive for most. Consequently, it is not surprising that the highest drug-related mortality rates in the United States are found in regions, including Appalachia and Oklahoma, with lower rates of university completion and greater economic distress.12 Attention-grabbing headlines claiming that opioids (or any other drug) are killing people are wrong. Ignorance and poverty are killing people, just as they have for centuries.

The time he spent could have been more usefully applied, it might seem, to finishing the Adoration of the Magi or Saint Jerome. But just as today we love halftime shows and Broadway extravaganzas, fireworks displays and choreographed performances, the events staged by the Sforza court were considered vital, and their producers, including Leonardo, were highly valued. The entertainments were even educational at times, like an ideas festival; there were demonstrations of science, debates over the relative merits of various art forms, and displays of ingenious devices, all of which were a precursor to the public science and edifying discourse that later became popular during the Enlightenment.

Nothing could have been less in line with contemporary conceptions of art than that the theatre should be divorced from all relation to life and politics. Greek tragedy was in the strictest sense ‘political drama’; the finale of Eumenides, with its fervent prayers for the prosperity of the Attic state, betrays the main purpose of the piece. This political control of the theatre brought back to currency the old view that the poet is guardian of a higher truth and an educator who leads his people up to a higher plane of humanity. Through the performance of tragedies on the state-ordained festivals and the circumstances that tragedy came to be looked upon as the authoritative interpretation of the national myths, the poet once more attains to a position almost equivalent to that of the priestly seer of prehistoric times.

Do you mean to tell me,” she cried out, “that he left nothing! That Sara will have no fortune! That the child is a beggar! That she is left on my hands a little pauper instead of an heiress?” Mr. Barrow was a shrewd businessman, and felt it as well to make his own freedom from responsibility quite clear without any delay. “She is certainly left a beggar,” he replied. “And she is certainly left on your hands, ma’am--as she hasn’t a relation in the world that we know of.” Miss Minchin started forward. She looked as if she was going to open the door and rush out of the room to stop the festivities going on joyfully and rather noisily that moment over the refreshments. “It is monstrous!” she said. “She’s in my sitting room at this moment, dressed in silk gauze and lace petticoats, giving a party at my expense.” “She’s giving it at your expense, madam, if she’s giving it,” said Mr. Barrow, calmly.

There was a loud din, a drunken gaiety. Young people, adults, children were dancing. But I could feel the reality behind the appearance of festivity. The distorted faces of the bride’s relatives signaled a quarrelsome discontent. Especially the women. They had spent their last cent for the gift, for what they were wearing, had gone into debt, and now they were treated like poor relations, with bad wine, intolerable delays in service? Why didn’t Lila intervene, why didn’t she protest to Stefano? I knew them. They would restrain their rage for love of Lila but at the end of the reception, when she went to change, when she came back, dressed in her beautiful traveling clothes, when she handed out the wedding favors, when she had left, with her husband, then a huge fight would erupt, and it would be the start of hatreds lasting months, years, and offenses and insults that would involve husbands, sons, all with an obligation to prove to mothers and sisters and grandmothers that they knew how to be men.

This book festival...grew to attract thousands of visitors every year. Now they felt like they needed a new purpose. The festival’s continuing existence felt assured. What was it for? What could it do? How could it make itself count? The festival’s leadership reached out to me for advice on these questions. What kind of purpose could be their next great animating force? Someone had the idea that the festival’s purpose could be about stitching together the community. Books were, of course, the medium. But couldn’t an ambitious festival set itself the challenge of making the city more connected? Couldn’t it help turn strong readers into good citizens? That seemed to me a promising direction—a specific, unique, disputable lodestar for a book festival that could guide its construction...We began to brainstorm. I proposed an idea: Instead of starting each session with the books and authors themselves, why not kick things off with a two-minute exercise in which audience members can meaningfully, if briefly, connect with one another? The host could ask three city- or book-related questions, and then ask each member of the audience to turn to a stranger to discuss one of them. What brought you to this city—whether birth or circumstance? What is a book that really affected you as a child? What do you think would make us a better city? Starting a session with these questions would help the audience become aware of one another. It would also break the norm of not speaking to a stranger, and perhaps encourage this kind of behavior to continue as people left the session. And it would activate a group identity—the city’s book lovers—that, in the absence of such questions, tends to stay dormant. As soon as this idea was mentioned, someone in the group sounded a worry. “But I wouldn’t want to take away time from the authors,” the person said. There it was—the real, if unspoken, purpose rousing from its slumber and insisting on its continued primacy. Everyone liked the idea of “book festival as community glue” in theory. But at the first sign of needing to compromise on another thing in order to honor this new something, alarm bells rang. The group wasn’t ready to make the purpose of the book festival the stitching of community if it meant changing the structure of the sessions, or taking time away from something else. Their purpose, whether or not they admitted it, was the promotion of books and reading and the honoring of authors. It bothered them to make an author wait two minutes for citizens to bond. The book festival was doing what many of us do: shaping a gathering according to various unstated motivations, and making half-hearted gestures toward loftier goals.

The one Asian nation with which we have, alas, made no headway whatsoever is China. … The Chinese government, in fact, is totally committed to the Arab war against Israel, and Mr. Arafat and his comrades are constantly given arms, money, and moral support by Peking, though I, for one, have never understood why, and for years, lived under the illusion that if we could only talk to the Chinese, we might get through to them. Two pictures come to my mind when I mention China. The first is the horror with which I picked up a mine manufactured in China – so far away and remote from us – which had put an end to the life of a six-year-old girl in a border settlement in Israel. I stood there near that small coffin, surrounded by weeping, enraged relatives. ‘What on earth can the Chinese have against us?’ I kept thinking. ‘They don’t even know us.’ Then I remember, at the celebration of Kenya’s independence, sitting at a table near that of the Chinese delegation. It was a very relaxed, festive occasion, and I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps if I go over and sit down with them, we can talk a bit.’ So I asked Ehud to introduce himself to the Chinese. He walked over, held out his hand to the head of the delegation and said, ‘My foreign minister is here and would like to meet you.’ The Chinese just averted their gaze. They didn’t even bother to say, ‘No, thank you, we don’t want to meet her.

The central ceremony of Ritual Witchcraft was the so-called "Sabbath" - a word of unknown origin having no relation to its Hebrew homonym. Sabbaths were celebrated four times a year - on Candlemass Day, February 2nd, on Rood Mass Day, May 1st, on Lammas Day, August 1st, and on the eve of All Hallows, October 31st. These were great festivals, often attended by hundreds of devotees, who came from considerable distances. Between Sabbaths there were weekly "Esbats" from small congregations in the village where the ancient religion was still practiced. At all high Sabbaths the devil himself was invariably present, in the person of some man who had inherited, or otherwise acquired, the honor of being the incarnation of the two-faced god of the Dianic cult. The worshipers paid homage to the god by kissing his reverse face - a mask worn, beneath an animal's tail, on the devil's backside. There was then, for some at least of the female devotees, a ritual copulation with the god, who was equipped for this purpose with an artificial phallus of horn or metal. This ceremony was followed by a picnic (for the Sabbaths were celebrated out of doors, near sacred trees or stones), by dancing and finally by a promiscuous sexual orgy that had, no doubt, originally been a magical operation for increasing the fertility of the animals on which primitive hunters and herdsmen depend for their livelihood. The prevailing atmosphere at the Sabbaths was one of good fellowship and mindless, animal joy. When captured and brought to trial, many of the who had taken part in the Sabbath resolutely refused, even under torture, even at the stake, to abjure the religion which had brought them so much happiness.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lost his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves. the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under out knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves" It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to always have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?

On a street around the corner from my coauthor’s house the parents have organized themselves into what they call “the little block that can.” Social relations are deliberately cultivated among the families living on this block. There are benches and picnic tables outside several of the homes where parents and kids of all ages gather. The children have learned to relate to all the adults on this street as attachment figures, surrogate aunts and uncles. Once a year the street is shut off to traffic for what, in effect, is a village festival. There are games, food is served, music is played from loudspeakers. The local fire department drives up with a red engine and children frolic in the spray of the fire hose.

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead. And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being “out of fashion,” not only do they add beauty to our daily lives, they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial.

Finish the sentence “I’m the kind of person who” with the identity—or identities—you’d like to embrace. Go to events that gather people, products, and services related to your emerging identity. When I decided I wanted to get into fermented foods, I went to the local Fermentation Festival. I met enthusiasts who were more experienced than I was. I learned about new products. I attended a workshop where an expert showed us how to make sauerkraut. I bought gear to ferment foods. I came home with a much stronger identity about being the kind of person who eats—and even makes—fermented foods. Learn the lingo. Know who the experts are. Watch movies related to the area of change you’re interested in. As I learned to surf, I looked up the lingo that described waves and started using it. I paid attention to big surfing events and watched videos of the most proficient people in the sport. I learned to understand the tide shifts and

Once they were all finally gone, I turned around and noticed Adeena and Elena looking like the "Jessica Fletcher eating popcorn" gif as they shared a bucket of popcorn while enjoying the drama. "OK, I get that we're at a corn festival, but how did you get the popcorn so fast? Do you travel with props for moments like this?" Adeena winked. "You know how dedicated I am when it comes to a bit. But no, your sweet boyfriend left when things started getting heated and returned with snacks for us." Jae turned red as he held out a cone full of cornick from my aunt, a disk of corn tempura from our friend Yuki's booth, and other yummy corn-related snacks. "It was getting uncomfortable, and I figured I might as well make myself useful. I know what happens when you all get hungry, so I figured I'd grab food for you before it gets too crowded." "He's a keeper, all right," Elena said, grinning at him as she dipped the corn tempura disk into the accompanying sauce.

The first of the tests is the overcoming of appetite. This involves their doing a two days’ walk or hunt without food, and then being brought suddenly before a fire on which some choice kangaroo steak or other native delicacy is being cooked. They are required to take only a small portion of this. The next is the test of pain. The young boys and girls submit to having their noses pierced, their bodies marked, and to being laid down upon hot embers thinly covered with boughs. The third is the test of fear. The young people are told awesome and hair-raising stories about ghosts and the muldarpe, the Evil Spirit or the Devil-devil. After all these tests they are put to sleep in a lonely place, or near the burial-place of the tribe. During the night the elders, who are made hideous with white clay and bark headdresses, appear, making weird noises. Those of the candidates who show no signs of having had a disturbed night are then admitted as fully initiated members of the tribe. No youth or maiden is allowed to marry without having passed these tests. A proposed marriage is talked over first by all the old members of the tribe. The uncle on the mother’s side is the most important relative, and it is he who finally selects the wife. The actual marriage ceremony takes place during the time of festivals. The husband does not look at or speak to his mother-in-law, although he is husband in name to all his sisters-in-law.

The best Christmas present you can give to your dead grandfather is not showing up until Easter. And telling no one about it. Especially not yourself.

But this was day five. The land around the city swarmed with the armies of the gods. An elaborate tent for the reigning deity and his king sat in the center of each army. Since Inanna had her residence at Erech, she did not have her own forces. The soldiers in the armies had remained relatively civil. Raping of women was held to a minimum, for it was considered somewhat vulgar when invited to a city’s festival as this. Under normal situations of course, it was perfectly fine, but not as guests of the high god Anu in his own city. They would soon enough find their outlet to loot and desecrate.

The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing.

When after a few days the party relocated to Kazakhstan on an ancient plane chartered by NASA, the mood became even more festive. Jet lag, frigid temperatures that shocked even Canadians and a complete absence of language skills were apparently remedied with wild nights in various Baikonur “hot spots.” When Helene and the kids trooped over from the hotel to see me for the hour or two we were allotted to be together each day, they brought increasingly colorful stories about sensible, hard-working relatives and friends who had, the night before, morphed into vodka-loving party animals with a taste for wearing other people’s bras draped on their heads like berets.

introduction concerning the prophecy of Daniel and the current generally accepted Christian interpretations. As he continued to read, he was surprised to find that Zane Harrison, instead of confirming the Christian consensus, seemed to be undermining it with clear contextual arguments based on the chronology of the Old Testament. So far, Zane had made a compelling argument why not to believe Yeshua had fulfilled the prophecy of seventy weeks. Then he had summarized a biblical understanding of time in relation to the biblical festivals as given by YHWH to Moses.

Every year we get together and throw a big feast for the winter solstice, a festival in which every game and every confectionary you could possibly imagine suddenly become a reality.  The children put on a play about the Black Bear and the Gray Bear, an age-old story that relates the Gray Bear's trip to eternity through the freezing white snow of the north.  At the very end of the celebration the men and the women perform the warm dance, a giant, joyful circle dance the Shoshone invented thousands of years ago in order to send blessings to the wild animals who

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.

But ecstatic rituals are also good, and expressive of our artistic temperament and spiritual yearnings as well as our solidarity. So how can civilization be regarded as a form of progress if it precludes something as distinctively human, and deeply satisfying, as the collective joy of festivities and ecstatic rituals? In a remarkable essay titled "The Decline of the Choral Dance," Paul Halmos wrote in 1952 that the ancient and universal tradition of the choral dance - meaning the group dance, as opposed to the relative recent, European - derived practice of dancing in couples - was an expression of our "group-ward drives" and "biological sociality." Hence its disappearance within complex societies, and especially within industrial civilization, can only represent a "decline of our biosocial life" - a painfully disturbing conclusion.

My Golden Earth (The Sonnet) O my golden earth, I am but your stupid lover. The flute of your dazzling fragrance, Makes my agonies disappear. Whenever your sky is cloudy, My heart drowns in drought. Whenever your oceans quiver, With tears my eyes get fraught. Whenever you giggle in prosperity, It pours honey into my ears. Whenever you shine with festivals, Light and love erase my historic fears. You are my home o my golden earth. All your children are my sisters and brothers.

The poet Horace relates the story of the merry character of the Neptunalia (Carm. 3.28) but, in essence, we know nothing about the purpose of this boisterous event. Was the Neptunalia a celebration of the harvest not yet complete? Was it a festival to avert water shortage?

The Vestals were the keepers of the palladium and the ignis perpetuus (the perpetual fire). The festival day of Vesta, June 9, was also a special day for bakers (pistores). Pliny records that Romans did not have bakers until the early second century BCE.108 Each citizen (quiris) prepared his own bread, but baking was women’s work (mulierum opus). During the Vestalia, the donkey, usually bound under terrible conditions to millstones, was freed from work. The Vestals were not related to the bakers through the element of fire but through the use of wheat, the main ingredient for bread. The Vestals prepared special salted cakes (mola salsa) on June 9, thus ritually carrying out the socially and culturally assigned task of women.

The Mordvinic material on this Goddess speaks for itself and requires very little analysis that hasn’t been done already. Ange Patyai completes and reinforces this chapter’s topics perfectly. The Slavic Mokosh / Paraskevi can be inferred to be a close relative of the Mordvin Ange Patyai, and perhaps more distantly to Frau Holle and the Cailleach. She was a Goddess of fertility, birth, and of the guardian spirits assigned at birth (which could share many qualities with her). She had a major winter festival in November or December, but was probably celebrated prominently during the warm half of the year as well - thus casting doubt on any simplistic generalizations about her seasonal nature.

Raksha Bandhan 2023: Auspicious Date and Time of Raksha Bandhan Rakhi, also known as Raksha Bandhan, is a traditional Hindu holiday that honors the protective and loving ties that exist between siblings, particularly between brothers and sisters. The event is normally celebrated on the day of the full moon in the Hindu month of Shravana, which usually falls in August. Raksha Bandhan 2023 Overview :- Festivals Name Raksha Bandhan Also Known as Rakhi, Saluno, Silono, Rakri Observed by Hindus Traditionally Type Religious Cultural Date Purnima (Full Moon) of Shrawan Holiday Type Restricted Holiday Raksha Bandhan 2023 - Auspicious Date and Time of Raksha Bandhan: Raksha Bandhan is observed on the day of the full moon in the month of Shravan, as it is every year. Raksha Bandhan is celebrated over two days this year, just like it was last year. This time, the full moon will be seen beginning at 10:59 on August 30 and continuing through 7:06 on August 31. Raksha Bandhan can be observed during the Uddhiya period, the only time frame we use for festivals, but this time, on August 30, the timing means that Bhadra cannot be avoided. On August 31, Raksha Bandhan can be honored. On August 30, at 10:59, the full moon will start, but Bhadra will not. Rakhi can only be tied with the thread after 9:03 p.m. to commemorate Raksha Bandhan. Between 5:32 and 6:32, when Bhadra is on the tail, Raksha Bandhan can be seen. If Bhadra is on Mukha, which occurs between 6:32 to 8:13, Rakhi cannot be observed. The August 31 full moon will be visible till 7:06 in the morning. Raksha Bandhan 2023 can be celebrated on August 31 if you follow Udaya Tithi. A Basis of Raksha Bandhan's Traditions and Significance may be Found Here: Tie a Rakhi: Sisters tie their brothers' wrists with a sacred thread known as a "Rakhi" on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. This thread stands for their love, respect, and promise of security. Brothers promise to look out for and help their sisters throughout their lives in exchange for gifts or other tokens of appreciation from their sisters. Prayers and Rituals: The day starts with rituals and prayers. Before tying the Rakhi, sisters regularly do an aarti (a ritual involving a lamp) and place a tilak (a sacred mark) on their brothers' foreheads. Exchange of Gifts: Along with the Rakhi, presents are given and received as tokens of affection and respect. Sisters may receive gifts from brothers in the form of cash, garments, jewelry, or other items. Family Gathering: Families regularly get together for Raksha Bandhan. Even if they are separated by distance, siblings usually make an effort to be together and celebrate special occasions. Symbolism: The holiday represents the special and close relationship between siblings. Not only do family members participate, but also cousins and close relatives. The Rakhi thread is regarded as a representation of safety and an ongoing expression of the bond between brothers and sisters. Historical and Mythological Significance: Many historical and mythical stories are connected to the celebration. One well-known story has the queen Draupadi securing a piece of her sari to the bleeding wrist of Lord Krishna. Krishna promised to look out for her in return. The relationship between Lord Yama, the God of Death, and his sister Yamuna is the subject of another story. Yama's sister received the blessing that anyone who ties a Rakhi to him will live forever. Overall, Raksha Bandhan is a happy holiday that enhances family relationships and honors the emotional bond between siblings. It is a season of affection, respect, and support of bonds between siblings. To Learn More, Go Here

The generations steeped in the virtual will never have known the Real. But that is not so serious if we accept that the Real is merely a referential illusion. More serious is the case of those who, steeped in sex and images of sex, will never have known pleasure. But this is nothing in relation to the possibility, for future generations, of never knowing death. With so many spectacles, festivals, symposiums, art fairs and book fairs, the desire for a sudden cultural recession, or at least for a period of latency, for long enough to recover the savour of a book or the silence of images. Zero (degree zero, zero risk, Ground Zero, zero deaths) is the current form of perfection, empty, sterile and faultless. It is the nil-sum equation, defined by the elimination of all variables. In this sense, there is no longer any difference between the perfection of life and that of death.

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the nation that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead. And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being "out of fashion," not only do they add beauty to our daily lives, they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial.

The Christian festival calendar expanded considerably during Late Antiquity. Christmas, or Christ’s birth, has been celebrated on December 25 since at least the middle of the fourth century (though it was a relatively minor feast day that accrued additional traditions, such as gift-giving, from association with the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia); Pentecost was marked in the late spring to remember the descent of the Holy Spirit as described in the Acts of the Apostles (2:1–31); and the Easter cycle took shape as the most important part of the Christian liturgical year.

That festival, called Lady-day, is celebrated at Rome on the 25th of March, in alleged commemoration of the miraculous conception of our Lord in the womb of the Virgin, on the day when the angel was sent to announce to her the distinguished honour that was to be bestowed upon her as the mother of the Messiah. But who could tell when this annunciation was made? The Scripture gives no clue at all in regard to the time. But it mattered not. But our Lord was either conceived or born, that very day now set down in the Popish calendar for the "Annunciation of the Virgin" was observed in Pagan Rome in honour of Cybele, the Mother of the Babylonian Messiah. Now, it is manifest that Lady-day and Christmas-day stand in intimate relation to one another. Between the 25th of March and the 25th of December there are exactly nine months.

...If you're not with family on major holidays, people worry, calling to see if you're being sufficiently festive, yelling at you if you eat Chee-tos for phans by circumstance, geography, or choice, but a cultural conspiracy was afoot to make us feel otherwise. Work, I decided, was the antidote.

Wicca is a pagan, natureand witchcraft-based religion. A Wiccan is someone that follows pagan beliefs and also practises witchcraft as a part of their faith. We follow the eight Sabbats (festivals) and twelve Esbats (celebrations of the full moon) and practise magickal workings such as rituals and spell work at specific times related to the phases of the moon. A Wiccan follows the energy and power of the natural earth and the universe and all its natural occurrences, the moon, the sun and the stars.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party. Dad never became rich, and I’ve been told some blame fell upon my mom for failing to help him climb the career ladder. Instead of standing by her man, she acquired hippie habits, wore dashikis, and was a lousy teammate at cocktail parties.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party.

The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Candé, girdled, like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while his thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled in the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set dreaming of artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and then, behind him, M. de Planck, who with his huge carp's head and goggling eyes moved slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great mandibles at every moment as though in search of his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part intended to suggest the whole which recalled to Swann, a fervent admirer of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that Injustice by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests that enshroud his secret lair.

We have but one way, as it seems to me, of showing our gratitude to those who lie here: it is to hold their parents in the same high regard as they did, to be as affectionate to their children as though we were ourselves their fathers, and to give such support to their wives as they did while they lived. For whom could we be expected to honor in preference to those who lie here? Whom amongst the living should we more justly hold in high regard than their relations, who were on an equality with us all in reaping the fruits of their valor, but now that they are dead bear alone the kinsmen’s part in their misfortune? But in truth I do not know what need there is to lament so sadly: for we were quite aware that we were mortals. So why chafe now at the fate which we so long expected, or be so extremely distressed by the calamities of nature, when we know well that death is common to the basest and the noblest alike? Death neither disdains the wicked nor admires the virtuous, but is even-handed with all. Were it possible for those who escaped the perils of war to be immortal for all time, there would be cause for the living to mourn the dead for evermore. But we see not only that our nature yields to sickness and old age, but that the spirit to whom has been allotted the charge of our fate is inexorable. Therefore it is fitting to consider those most happy who have closed their lives in risking them for the greatest and noblest ends; not committing their career to chance, nor awaiting the death that comes of itself, but selecting the fairest one of all. For I say their memory can never grow old, while their honor is every man’s envy. Of their nature it comes that they are mourned as mortal, of their valor that they are lauded as immortal. Thus you see them given a public funeral, and contests of strength and knowledge and wealth* held at their tomb; because we think that those who have fallen in war are worthy of receiving the same honors as the immortals. * Since about 450 B.C. the State funerals had become elaborate festivals: they were celebrated each year in October, and included athletic and musical competitions. (Funeral Oration section 75-80)