Posts Tagged ‘secular’
History of New Year’s Day: Why on January 1?
Reading Time: 4 minutesHistory of New Year’s Day: Why on January 1? It wasn’t always on this date. This article discusses its history.
Read MoreHistory of the Holidays: the Backstory of Holidays
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHistory of the Holidays: the Backstory of Holidays Welcome to this year’s edition of the History of the Holidays. I’m Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian. This is a series that recounts the history behind the major American holidays, and some of the minor ones as well.
Read MoreHistory of Veterans Day
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF VETERANS DAY A professor once commented, "We write things down so we can forget them." Now, of course this is wrong, except in the limited sense of writing down appointments so we don’t have to worry about missing meetings. But that’s just it, we do forget things. As individuals we forget things that…
Read MoreHistory of May Day
Reading Time: 2 minutesMAY DAY May Day is many things to many people. Etymologically, it is a homophone for the international call for help. It is a corruption of the French imperative “M’aidez” meaning “Help me!” As a holiday it is claimed by many. It is known in the pagan world as Beltane, a fertility celebration, one of…
Read MoreHistory of Christmas: the Year
Reading Time: < 1 minute.!. THE YEAR It’s obvious that Jesus was born on December 25, A.D. 1, right? Wrong. We do know that Herod the Great (who killed all the babies in Bethlehem younger than 2 years of age) died in the spring of 4 B.C., and the king was quite alive during the visit of the Wise…
Read MoreHistory of Veterans Day
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF VETERANS DAY A professor once commented, "We write things down so we can forget them." Now, of course this is wrong, except in the limited sense of writing down appointments so we don’t have to worry about forgetting things. But that’s just it, we do forget things. As individuals we forget things that…
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