Chinese New Year - January 26

Gong hei fat choi! This is one of the greetings that you may hear today as it is the first day of the Chinese New Year. Many think it means "Happy New Year" but actually it means "Congratulation and be prosperous".

The Chinese New Year is actually a 15 day long festival and the most important celebration in the Chinese culture. Being around 2,000 years old, the festival is one of the oldest and longest running festivals in the world. As with most days that are recognized that are this old it is based on the lunar calendar, which does not coincided with the present western calender. The festival, also known as the Spring Festival, begins on the new moon and concludes on the first full moon.

The festivals roots lay in a legend where a Chinese farmer was attacked by a dragon during this time of year named Nien, which is also the Chinese word for year. It was discovered that the dragon could be scared with loud noises and the color red. Because of this it is good luck to set off firecrackers and the color red is considered a very lucky color, many of the clothes people will wear incorporate it.

There are many traditions and customs that are followed on both the first day and then through out the festival. The giving of red envolopes seems to be one of the most important of these. It is given from older people to children and unwed young adults and contains money. Sometimes the money may be in the form of chocolate coins, but what ever type of money it may be it will never add up to four as the word for four and the word for death are very similar. Another tradition is that one does not sweep during the first day of the new year as it will sweep away good luck, tied to this same thinking is that you should not wash your hair on the first day as it to will wash away luck, though this is gone out of fashion with modern thinking on bathing. At midnight between the last day and the first day every door and window should be opened to let the bad luck out so you can start the year off fresh with good luck.

I will not be going through each and everyday as I made the mistake of witting this a little late I did want to point out that the second day is the birthday of all dogs. Being a dog owner I thought this was very cool, though was unable to find why this day was chosen or why dogs are the only animal to really be recognized during the festival.

The last day of the festival is the Lantern Festival, which I plan to go into much more detail on that day.

So have a Happy New Year!

Links:
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year
History Channel: http://www.history.com/content/chinesenewyear
Others:
http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/438/CHINA/chinese_new_year.html
http://www.123chinesenewyear.com/

Podcast Week Ending 013009

The new podcast is available to the left or you can hover over the the link here and a window should pop up where you can listen as well or even better subscribe in iTunes which is also available to the left.

Here are the links we used during this episode.

Chinese New Year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

http://www.history.com/content/chinesenewyear

http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/438/CHINA/chinese_new_year.html

Sementivae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sementivae

Holocaust Remembrance Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day

Republic Day, India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_Day_(India)

Jefferson's library

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan30.html

Bounty Day - January 23

The island of Pitcairn celebrates January 23, the day the survivors of the Bounty mutiny landed to set up a life for themselves.  The day is celebrated with a reenactment of the landing with model boats and then the people will walk the path that was followed by the original people.  The Bounty Day is also celebrated on Norfolk Island but on the day the Pitcairners landed there due to not being able to make a sustainable life on the original island, this is done on June 8th.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty_Day

General: http://www.jasons.com/Norfolk-Island/bounty-day-on-norfolk-island
http://www.bountygenealogy.com/bounty/bountyday.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Bounty-Day

Quebec, Flag Day - January 21

Flag of Quebec

I found little information on the Quebec Flag Day and what little I hound indicated that it is not celebrated very much. I have to assume that January 21st was picked because it was the first day that the new/current flag was flown above the parliament building shortly after it was adopted in 1947.

Wiki: Flag of Quebec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Quebec
Quebec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec

Official Quebec site: http://www.gouv.qc.ca/portail/quebec/pgs/commun/portrait/drapeau/?lang=en

United States Presidential Inauguration - January 20th, every 4 years.

For today's post I am going to only write a few words, mainly due my belief that this should not be a United States centric blog. I do feel that it is important to say a few words as the inauguration of the President of the United States marks the continuation of the longest running democratically and peaceful handing of power from one leader to another the world has seen.

Originally the inauguration was March 4th and in 1933 changed to the present date, though it is not an official holiday. The most important aspect of the ceremony is the swearing in of the new president, which has been done almost exclusively by the Chief Justice of the United States.

I am sure there are very few people in the world who do not know that the new president will be taking office today, many will see the ceramony itself or at least parts of it, so will not go into detail.