posted on March 3, 2004 04:33:27 PM new
I was yapping with one a friend in Englad today and we somehow got on the topic of crazy holidays. By far the strangest we could think of was England Guy Faulks (sp?) Day where they "celebrate" and attempt to blow up Parliment every year with Fireworks displays. Since we have representatives of more than ba couple different nations and cultures here I thought it might be fun to hear about other strange holidays in other nations?
Krafty, Aust, Prof, Max etc... give us some examples or just dish on some of our strangest here in the US....
I.E. I had a friend here from Mexico who was amazed at the shear coincidence that all of our famous presidents/leaders whose birthdays we celebrate all seem to have birthdays that fall on a Monday every year.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on March 3, 2004 05:20:23 PM new
Guy Fawkes Day doesn't celebrate an attempt to blow up Parliament. It marks the anniversay of that event. Not the same thing. The bonfires on which a "guy" (dummy) is burnt is the perpetrator, Guy Fawkes, being burnt in effigy.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 3, 2004 05:42:32 PM new
Bunni - Can you imagine the uproar if someone decided to apply the thinking behind that tradition to The World Trade Center? Celebrate may have been he wrong word but I blanked on the right one which is why i put it in quotations. I remember being in Lodon many eons ago as a young lass and being so amused at the irony when someone explained why thee were firworks going off all over the place.
other point of amusement - all the souvenier shops filled with tacky tourist junk like spoon and plates and shot glasses etc evenly divided between pieces commemorating the Queens Silver Julibilee and others commemorating the US Bicentential.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on March 3, 2004 05:52:22 PM newCan you imagine the uproar if someone decided to apply the thinking behind that tradition to The World Trade Center?
Oh yes. But times are different now. Most people in England probably don't give much thought, if any, to the origins of Guy Fawkes Day, nor to what the burning of the guy means. It has just become a fun holiday.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 3, 2004 06:47:34 PM new
Maybe 9/11 would been celebrated if it had be stopped like the English event. They ATTEMPTED to blow them up but they did not.
Not much to celebrate since they carried it off.
Of course if they had blown parliment up and perhaps overthrown the government they'd be celebrating it as the birth of the new nation and Guy would be the hero.
posted on March 3, 2004 07:31:51 PM new
I know there are lots of wacky holidays, but for me, in this time, the most absurd are the three most loved by kids; halloween, valentine's day, and easter....I would be first in line to back a movement to celebrate all three of them in July, when school is out...
Most kids these days have no idea what is being observed and don't care, it's just an excuse for candy and gifts. Yeah, I know, Easter is a sacred Christian observance, but in my experience, for most kids, it's all about the easter bunny and candy, and not about the resurrection of Jesus....
Sorry to be such an old grump, third quarter is the longest one of the year
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edited for orthography
[ edited by profe51 on Mar 3, 2004 09:05 PM ]
