Category: Holidays

Stories concerning holidays and seasons

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy  Mother’s Day

 

Happy Mother's Day

A mother’s love means a life’s devotion – and sometimes a life’s sacrifice – with but one thought, one hope and one feeling, that her children will grow up healthy and strong, free from evil habits and able to provide for themselves. Her sole wish is that they may do their part like men and women, avoid dangers and pitfalls, and when dark hours come, trust in Providence to give them strength, patience and courage to bear up bravely.
Happy is the mother when her heart’s wish is answered, and happy are sons and daughters when they can feel that they have contributed to her noble purpose, and in some measure, repaid her unceasing, unwavering love and devotion.
–Anonymous

 

Christos Voskrese 2023

Christos Voskrese 2023 — Christos voskrese, which means Christ has Risen, is the Easter greeting in Church Slavonic which brings the response Voistinu voskrese or Indeed, He has risen.

Christos Voskrese 2023

Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the salvation of Man.  The date for Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is always reckoned, regardless of astronomical observations, to be March 21 as per the Western churches that use the Gregorian calendar, so Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25.

The dating for Easter correlates with the means the Jews once used to set the date for Passover, which correlates with Scripture since Scripture indicates that the Crucifixion of the Lord occurred as the lambs were being slaughtered for the celebration of that holiday. In fact, in most Western languages the name for the day is a cognate of the Pesach which is the Hebrew name for Passover. In Latin it would be Pascha so Paschal lamb would be Passover lamb.

In English and German, the word comes from Eostre month, which was basically April, and which the pagans who spoke Germanic languages had named for the goddess Eostre much as our own March and April are named for the Greek god and goddess Mars and Aphrodite, respectively. In Slavic, the holiday is called “Great Night” (Velikonoce in Slovak) or “Great Day” (Velikden in Ukrainian). There are some caveats regarding the date. The Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar set the equinox  at April 3, and, of course, the spring equinox is based on that of the Northern Hemisphere.

Christos Voskrese 2023

Spring 2023 Starts Now 

Spring 2023 Starts Now –According to our server’s clock it is now  5:24 p.m. EDT, EDT, March 20, which means the vernal equinox is happening and Spring 2023 has begun.

Equinox is Latin for “equal night.” Days and nights are approximately equal everywhere and the Sun rises and sets due east and west, explains The Old Farmers Almanac. At the equinoxes, the tilt of Earth relative to the Sun is zero, which means that Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the Sun.

Vernal comes from the Latin vernalis which means spring.

Spring 2023 Starts Now 

Merry Christmas 2022

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown 2022

Here’s what Christmas is all about:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown 2022

Christmas Pagan? Nope

Christmas Pagan? Nope — Conventional wisdom has become that the holiday celebrating the birth of Christ is something the early Christians co-opted from a pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice.

A Muhlenberg College history professor says that is completely backwards.

William J. Tighe, an associate professor at the college in Allentown, says that Christmas really was thought to be the date of the Lord Jesus’ birth.

The thinking then was that great Jewish prophets died on the date of their birth or conception.

The date of Jesus’ death can be calculated from Gospel accounts.

The faction using the Latin calendar wound up placing the Crucifixion at March 25, according to Tighe. This was the faction that became dominant in the West.

The Latin church determined that  was also date that the Archangel Gabriel announced that Mary was with child. Nine months later, on Dec. 25, would be  the Lord’s birth.

March 25 is still celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation.

Tighe  notes that Rome didn’t celebrate Dec. 25 as a pagan holiday until the anti-Christian Emperor Aurelian declared it to be the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” in 274. By then, Christianity was already making its impact well felt on the Empire.

Tighe is also a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry and a member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem.

Christmas Pagan? Nope

Christmas Pagan? Nope

Christmas Pagan? Nope

Hat tip Bob Guzzardi

%d bloggers like this: