Humans Have Always Wanted to Feast and Have Holidays It seems almost every race of people on this planet has had holidays, and before that were probably called just special days. Many were to celebrate the gods or to appease them. Some were to celebrate the harvest and others to show power to their enemies. Take some of the holidays today and you will see what I mean. It is interesting to note Christmas Day while celebrated here on 25 December, is celebrated in Russia on 31 December. While the dates are different it is interesting to note both could be wrong, but that is not the point, the point is it is supposed to be a celebration of Christ’s birthday. Russia has several military holidays such as Defender of the Fatherland Day and others. A military holiday sometimes can be an excuse to flaunt all sorts of weapons in endless parades. It seems they are almost silently saying we are too powerful to mess with, and yet look at what is happening in Ukraine. The Russians do celebrate New Years Day on 1 January, meaning one day it is Christmas and the next New Year’s Day. One amazing thing is Halloween is celebrated in many different countries but sometimes not in the same way. When I was a child in Brooklyn, Halloween was not celebrated, but on Thanksgiving the kids would go around in disguises or funny homemade costumes and even to stores asking the question, “Anything for Thanksgiving?” We would get the equivalent of what kids get for Halloween. I remember when we would go to the local drug store and they would give us a box of cough drops. Halloween is celebrated all over North and Central America, a large part of South America, most of Western Europe, Russia and some of their former states, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia and there are a few islands. Another very popular day among all countries is their Independence Day. We celebrate ours on July 4, but it obviously is different for the other countries. Canada celebrates theirs on July 1 unless that is a Sunday, then it is celebrated the next day. China celebrates their independence on July 21. Russia bucks the tide; they do not have an independence day. India celebrates theirs on August 15. I don’t know why, but when you try and research what countries do not celebrate independence day some data states there are 7, but other data states there are none. Maybe it is the difference between acknowledging it and celebrating it. The Romans loved holidays and one of their biggest was Saturnalia. It celebrated the winter solstice which indicated daylight was getting longer. The reason for the name was the day was dedicated to the Roman god Saturn, who was the god of time and agriculture. There are Roman holidays which were turned into Christian holidays. It seems to be almost impossible to find a time when holidays or festivals didn’t exist. I guess it gave a chance for the ancients to have a day off from work and meet with friends and relatives, and get a respite from a grueling life of toil. When it comes to the ancient Greeks, they had plenty of holidays, unfortunately the dates cannot be listed. The reason for this is they used a lunar calendar so their dates would have no meaning to us. The custom of Christmas carols started with Homer. He visited the Greek island of Samos during the holiday of the birth of Dionysus and took a group of children around singing songs. Today we do the same but call it Christmas caroling. It is said one of the great things about ancient Egypt was it usually didn’t matter who ruled Egypt when it came to tradition and holidays. They mostly always stayed the same and this went on for many centuries. They seem to have had a feast for every god. That must have been very daunting with so many gods. It did however give the ancient Egyptians an excuse to not work and enjoy themselves. I know I would have loved to get time off from the back breaking work of pyramid construction. The ancient Babylonians had their holidays too. One of the biggest was stated as 12 March, but their calendar was different from ours. It was the feast of Marduk, an ancient god. It was believed he created the universe and all the humans. He was also said to be the god not only of life, but of light. He had other duties however and was also the god of fertility and thunderstorms and evolved to also be the god of water, judgement, magic and vegetation. Wow what a busy god. Going back even further in time to the Sumerians, who were considered the first civilization, some say they had no holidays, but others say the celebrated the coming and maybe going of their two seasons which they considered to be summer and winter. Since they were the first, they didn’t have anything to base holidays upon. The thing is when we go that far back in time to try and investigate the customs and beliefs of the first civilization, it is possible we just don’t know everything about them. They may indeed had religious holidays. It seems every race believed in god in their own way. I believe the human race has a need for holidays and festivals. In this country one of the greatest holidays is Thanksgiving. Why do I say this? It used to be a day when the entire country would get together with the same believe, which was they were thankful for being an American. Today there are some who no longer feel that way. Most of us however still feel that way, and all the illegals pouring into this country come here because they know we have something great and they want a piece of the pie. I am not saying we should be flooded with people who didn’t go through the proper channels, I am just talking about one of the reasons they come here. Soon we will be getting into the holiday season. This is usually the time businesses make most of their money. The question is going to be how many people will be able to afford presents and trips? I guess the only way we find this out will be when the holidays are over and the businesses state their sales. In December there are Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays.
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