Thursday, December 3, 2009
Thankgiving!
Most stories of Thanksgiving history start with the harvest celebration of the pilgrims and the indians that took place in the autumn of 1621. Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest, and the local indians did participate, this "first Thanksgiving" was not a holiday, simply a gathering. There is little evidence that this feast of thanks led directly to our modern Thanksgiving Day holiday. Thanksgiving can, however, be traced back to 1863 when Pres. Lincoln became the first president to proclaim Thanksgiving Day. The holiday has been a fixture of late November ever since.
However, since most school children are taught that the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621 with the pilgrims and indians, let us take a closer look at just what took place leading up to that event, and then what happened in the centuries afterward that finally gave us our modern Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims who sailed to this country aboard the Mayflower were originally members of the English Separatist Church (a Puritan sect). They had earlier fled their home in England and sailed to Holland (The Netherlands) to escape religious persecution. There, they enjoyed more religious tolerance, but they eventually became disenchanted with the Dutch way of life, thinking it ungodly. Seeking a better life, the Separatists negotiated with a London stock company to finance a pilgrimage to America. Most of those making the trip aboard the Mayflower were non-Separatists, but were hired to protect the company's interests. Only about one-third of the original colonists were Separatists.
Charles Dickens
Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, in Landport, Portsmouth, in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Barrow, 1789–1863).[5] He was christened at St Mary's Church in Portsea on 4 March 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town, in London.
His early years seem to have been an idyllic time, although he thought himself then a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".[6] He spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked, later in life, of his extremely poignant memories of childhood, and of his continuing photographic memory of the people and events that helped to bring his fiction to life. His family's early, moderate wealth provided the boy Dickens with some private education at William Giles's School, in Chatham.[7] This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father spent beyond his means in entertaining and in retaining his social position, and was finally imprisoned at Marshalsea debtor's prison. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family joined him in residence at Marshalsea, south of the Thames, (except for Charles, who boarded in Camden Town at the house of family friend Elizabeth Roylance).[8] Sundays became a treat, when with his sister Fanny, allowed out from the Royal Academy of Music, he spent the day at the Marshalsea.[9] The prison provided the setting of one of his works, Little Dorrit, and is where the title character's father is imprisoned.
Just before his father's arrest, 12-year-old Dickens had begun working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on jars of thick shoe polish. This money paid for his lodgings with Mrs. Roylance and helped support his family. Mrs. Roylance, Dickens later wrote, was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", and whom he eventually immortalized, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey & Son. Later, lodgings were found for him in a "back-attic...at the house of an insolvent-court agent, who lived in Lant Street in The Borough...he was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman, with a quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent grown-up son; these three were the inspiration for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop.[10] The mostly unregulated, strenuous—and often cruel—work conditions of the factory employees (especially children) made a deep impression on Dickens. His experiences served to influence later fiction and essays, and were the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor.
His early years seem to have been an idyllic time, although he thought himself then a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".[6] He spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked, later in life, of his extremely poignant memories of childhood, and of his continuing photographic memory of the people and events that helped to bring his fiction to life. His family's early, moderate wealth provided the boy Dickens with some private education at William Giles's School, in Chatham.[7] This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father spent beyond his means in entertaining and in retaining his social position, and was finally imprisoned at Marshalsea debtor's prison. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family joined him in residence at Marshalsea, south of the Thames, (except for Charles, who boarded in Camden Town at the house of family friend Elizabeth Roylance).[8] Sundays became a treat, when with his sister Fanny, allowed out from the Royal Academy of Music, he spent the day at the Marshalsea.[9] The prison provided the setting of one of his works, Little Dorrit, and is where the title character's father is imprisoned.
Just before his father's arrest, 12-year-old Dickens had begun working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on jars of thick shoe polish. This money paid for his lodgings with Mrs. Roylance and helped support his family. Mrs. Roylance, Dickens later wrote, was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", and whom he eventually immortalized, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey & Son. Later, lodgings were found for him in a "back-attic...at the house of an insolvent-court agent, who lived in Lant Street in The Borough...he was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman, with a quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent grown-up son; these three were the inspiration for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop.[10] The mostly unregulated, strenuous—and often cruel—work conditions of the factory employees (especially children) made a deep impression on Dickens. His experiences served to influence later fiction and essays, and were the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor.
Charles Dickens
When Charles Dickens was a small boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, he got lost in the City, the teeming financial and commercial center of the great metropolis of London. A friend of the family had taken him to look at the outside of St. Giles's Church with the hope of quenching a fantastical notion that had taken hold of him: young Dickens was convinced that on Sundays, the beggars of London, having cast off their weekday pretenses to blindness, lameness and other physical maladies, and freshly attired in their holiday best, were to be seen marching into the temple of their patron saint, where they would then partake of divine service.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Thankgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks to God for the harvest and express gratitude to others for our many blessings. While historically religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.
Chistmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday celebrated on December 25 that commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazaret.
Many Roman Catholics tradicionally celebrate the midnight Mass,which begins some minutes before midnight in Christmas Day;the ceremony which is taken in churches all around the world makes the beggining of Christmas Day.
Chritams Eve is also taken as the night Santa Clous makes his rounds delivering gifts to good children.
Halloween is celebrated on October 31.
It is a very big holiday.
In Halloween we usually use costumes,we use costumes because of a belief that in Halloween the dead people come alive to take reveange to the ones who killed them so we disguise like whitches and like dead persons so when the dead people come alive they don't kill us because they think we are dead too.
The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows day.
Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?"
Finally this holiday is celebrated all around the world.
It is a very big holiday.
In Halloween we usually use costumes,we use costumes because of a belief that in Halloween the dead people come alive to take reveange to the ones who killed them so we disguise like whitches and like dead persons so when the dead people come alive they don't kill us because they think we are dead too.
The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows day.
Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?"
Finally this holiday is celebrated all around the world.
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