Going to the Chapel… to watch other people get married

Tomorrow will be the 3rd wedding I’ve attended this month. And I thought last summer was wedding intensive!

I’ve been to people getting married by a non-religious friend in the middle of a park and I’ve been to a full mass and everything in between. There have been many differences between the various ceremonies, but a few major constants:

The big one being, of course, the celebration of a couple’s committment to spent their lives with love and each other. That’s a beautiful thing.

The other is the fact that many, many people have no idea what’s appropriate to wear to a wedding. Let me help.

Happy Pi Day!

Today is 3.14, also known as Pi Day. In its honor, some educational links:

Pi Day - The official web site for Pi Day, March 14th

Wikipedia: Pi

And in honor of the traditional way of celebrating Pi Day, some less educational links about pie.

Wikipedia: Pie

pie - The classic Weebl and Bob animation. Mmmmm! pie.

Please now report to your nearest purveyor of baked goods to consume the sacred round pastry. Please also report your favorite kind of pie, or the other ways in which pi has enriched your life, in the comments.

-Dana

Did That Critter See His Shadow?

If you’re in the U.S., it’s not unlikely that a certain rodent crossed your path this morning. Like most celebrities, he’s put on a few pounds in his old age and is getting ever more difficult to hoist in the air when that all-important premonition proclamation is made by his inner circle. Yes, that’s right: it’s Punxsutawney Phil’s day to shine . . . just like the early-morning sun, which cast a long shadow behind him and means six more weeks of winter. Phooey.

The holiday’s roots go back to the European tradition of Candlemas, when candles were blessed and distributed and the day’s weather was used to foretell the coming of spring. Imported by German settlers, Groundhog Day has been officially celebrated in that small town in Pennsylvania since 1887, though real interest in attending the ceremony didn’t take off until the Bill Murray/Andee MacDowell film highlighting the holiday and the town was released in 1993 (need to jog your memory?).

Unless you like a media circus, you’re better off visiting Phil any other day of the year when you’ll have his full and undivided attention. The town has developed a small number of groundhog- and weather-related attractions which can be enjoyed year-round. Your pilgrimage must include a stop at Phil’s home, a terrarium called “Groundhog Zoo” at the library building on Punxsy’s town square. Before leaving town, pick up a Phil-shaped cookie cutter and bake a few groundhogs in his honor every February ever after. Punxsutawney is approximately 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh and 150 miles southeast of Erie in west-central Pennsylvania.

The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

Yesterday, I was standing in my backyard and heard what I thought was artillery fire from the nearby army base. After a few moments, I realized that no, it wasn’t from the base. Instead, it was probably a 21 gun salute at Arlington National Cemetery, probably a memorial for Veteran’s Day.

I thought I’d introduce a new feature, in which I recommend books, movies and other things on a particular topic. What better topic to start off with than WWI? November 11th is remembered all over the Western world as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veteran’s Day. All over large portions of the world, we wear red poppies to remember Flander’s Field. But, in the US, WWI is so often overlooked.

Diwali: Festival of Lights

Today, Friday, is Diwali, a major Hindu festival. When I saw these pictures of Diwali celebration preparations in Durban, South Africa, I emailed my friend Danola, (who I met when we both taught in Japan, and who now lives in the UK, but happens to be from Durban,) and asked her to explain what Diwali is like and what it’s all about. Here is what she had to say:

Diwali is the festival of lights. It is celebrated to mark the return of Lord Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Laxman from their 14 years of exile in the forest. (Basically, Lord Rama’s jealous step-mum asked his father to banish him, so her son would be king of the land.) Anyway, that guy actually refused to be king. Instead, he ruled on his brother’s behalf until Lord Rama came back from the forest.

So those three, Lord Rama, Sita, and Laxman, are walking home and the news spreads. As it got dark, all the people of the country who were celebrating the return of the king lit clay lamps along the path, (so now it is the Festival of Light).

That’s the most famous part of the story. There are other stories - about his time in the forest and other deities he met and a drought and then plenty of rain so people had food and they celebrated - but the story of Lord Rama’s return is the main one.

All Saints And All Souls

Once upon a time, Halloween was merely the forerunner of the real holidays, those being the feasts of All Saints on November 1st and All Souls on November 2nd. They’ve eclipsed somewhat in the last four hundred years, but they still continue; All Saints Day is a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation (meaning you have to go unless you have an obstacle along the lines of getting hit by a truck) and while All Souls is not one, it’s still a big day and attendance is strongly encouraged.

All Saints isn’t just a commemoration of the saints who turn up in Butler’s; officially it is “For all saints, known and unknown” meaning that there’s a chance you could be commemorating your grandparents and second cousins twice removed along with Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. It’s a celebratory Mass, really; the theme of most of the homilies I’ve heard on All Saints (including the one today) was victory; victory over temptations, over your baser nature, over the relapses and bad beginnings which a lot of saints had, examples of which are often given; St. Jerome liked to curse people out, St. Augustine lived the high life which included a number of mistresses and at least one illegitimate child, things like that. But the point isn’t ultimately that all of the saints had failings and that makes it all right for you in the pew to be the same. The point is that they struggled and overcame, and there’s no excuse for anyone not to try and do the same. I’m not intending this as a proselytizing post (I’m terrible at apologetics anyway) but I wanted to give some idea of the flavour of what can be said when celebrating an All Saints Mass.

Till Up Then Started Young Tam Lin

One of the oldest - if not the oldest - Halloween stories extant is also one of the best. Anyone who’s spent a lot of time hanging around the library fantasy section has probably had an indirect encounter with Tam Lin, because the story has been adapted and novelized so many times - Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, set on a seventies campus, has probably gotten the most attention but at least ten others have published on the subject. It’s easy to see why these writers wanted to use the story, and also why some wanted to modernize the setting. A song with rape (maybe), accidental pregnancy, attempted abortion (or was it?), fairies, and human sacrifice ending with a curse all in one supernatural Halloween is hard to resist. But inevitably something is lost in translation, and the original version is still the most powerful - or so I’d say if it were certain which was the original version! There are about fifty versions out there, five or six of which have genuine claims to being very old. You can read them, and a lot of other things, at this site which is a Tam Lin gold mine and to which I’m shamelessly linking for the text of Child Ballad 39A, tentatively supposed to be the oldest extant version. According to the website, it was recorded in 1729, and probably had been around for a few hundred years before that. And now that you’ve read it …

Only 56 shopping days left!

I love the holidays as much as the next person.

In fact, I might love them *more* than the next person. I have so many plans for Thanksigiving that I can’t wait the three weeks and two days until it actually happens.

I have most of my Christmas presents figured out.

But… things are a little ridiculous. I’m growing used to seeing Christmas in stores before Halloween. (Especially after living in Europe, where they lack the Thanksgiving holiday buffer.) But tonight was not cool. Not cool at all.

What I’m not used to is living someplace where we might actually get trick-or-treaters, so tonight I stopped off at the grocery store to get some candy for tomorrow.

Only, all the Halloween candy was gone, and there was only Christmas candy.

Dear Children of Northern Virginia,

I apologize for the Christmas colored York Peppermint Patties you will be recieving if you come to my house this year. Next year, I will buy my candy in September. It might be a little stale, but it won’t feature snowflakes.

Forgive me,

Jennie

–posted by kidsilkhaze

Braai Day

Today is National Braai Day in South Africa. This is a celebration that was instituted to be in conjunction with SA National Heritage Day, beginning in 2005. According to this BBC article, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is now its patron:

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate celebrated his appointment by donning an apron and tucking into a sausage outside his office.

“This is something that can unite us. It is so proudly South African, so uniquely South African,” he said…

“We have 11 different official languages but only one word for the wonderful institution of braai: in Xhosa, English, Afrikaans, whatever,” he said.

“We’ve shown the world a few things. Let’s show them that ordinary activities like eating can unite people of different races, religions, sexes… short people, tall people, fat people, lean people,” he added.

Two Lunar Holy Days

We’ve been falling behind on our holiday posts and observances here at Geek Buffet, so here’s a quick note that today is both Rosh Hashanah and the first day of Ramadan.

(The latter was brought to my attention when I went to karate tonight, and my sensei had to take a break between the kids’ class before mine and the adult class in order to break his fast, as well as that of many of the kids. He brought milk for everyone. Yay!

However, that’s about the extent of my personal involvement with these holidays at the moment, so this isn’t much of a post. Sorry. I still thought it was worth mentioning.)