HAPPY HALL0WEEN

THIS IS A GOOD MOVIE IF YOU LIKE ZOMBIES YOU WILL LOVE THIS

1st EASTER IN THE WORLD........

Easter is an annual festival observed throughout the Christian world. The date for Easter shifts every

 year within the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the standard international calendar for

 civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant 

churches. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 

325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).

The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday throughout the world. To fix 

incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council 

constructed special tables to compute the date. These tables were revised in the following few

 centuries resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia,

 Dionysis Exiguus. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world.

HAPPY
Martin Luther King Jr.    Day

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday, January 15. The floating holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, though the act predated the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by 15 years.

King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed on January 20, 1986. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.     




                               

 THANKS TO MR. REAGAN FOR HIS PART IN MAKING
                 THIS A SUCCESSFULL HONOR

THE 1st NEW YEAR'S DAY

HAPPY NEW YEAR USA

But the day celebrated as New Year's Day in modern America was not always January 1.
The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC,
 the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon 
(actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring).
The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year. After all, it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops,
 and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.
The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration,
 but it is safe to say that modern New Year's Eve festivities pale in comparison.
 The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March,
 but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.
In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC,
 declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar,
 in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year.
 But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.


CAESAR, I WANT TO PARTY WITH YOU!

THE 1st THANKGIVING IN THE GOOD OLD USA

Thanksgiving at Plymouth

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where thePilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

THE 1st HALLOWEEN IN THE GOOD OLD USA.....

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.

Halloween Comes to America

Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country

THE 1st COLUMBUS DAY IN THE GOOD OLD USA

The first Columbus Day celebration took place in 1792, when New York's Columbian Order–better known as Tammany Hall–held an event to commemorate the historic landing's 300th anniversary. Taking pride in Columbus' birthplace and faith, Italian and Catholic communities in various parts of the country began organizing annual religious ceremonies and parades in his honor. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage with patriotic festivities, writing, "On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life."

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely as a result of intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic fraternal benefits organization. Originally observed every October 12, it was fixed to the second Monday in October in 1971

THE 1ST LABOR DAY ........IN THE GOOD OLD USA

LABOR DAY.....................






Labor Day, an annual celebration of workers and their achievements, originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters. In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages. People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.
 
As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions, which had first appeared in the late 18th century, grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay. Many of these events turned violent during this period, including the infamous Haymarket Riot of 1886, in which several Chicago policemen and workers were killed. Others gave rise to longstanding traditions: On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square inNew York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history. The idea of a “workingmen’s holiday,” celebrated on the first Monday in September, caught on in other industrial centers across the country, and many states passed legislation recognizing it.
 
Congress would not legalize the holiday until 12 years later, when a watershed moment in American labor history brought workers’ rights squarely into the public’s view. On May 11, 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives. On June 26, the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, crippling railroad traffic nationwide. To break the strike, the federal government dispatched troops to Chicago, unleashing a wave of riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers. In the wake of this massive unrest and in an attempt to repair ties with American workers, Congress passed an act making Labor Day a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
 
More than a century later, the true founder of Labor Day has yet to be identified. Many credit Peter J. McGuire, cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, while others have suggested that Matthew Maguire, a secretary of the Central Labor Union, first proposed the holiday.

THE 1st FATHER'S DAY

Origins of Father's Day

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm--perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.” On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910.

Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, they “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products--often paid for by the father himself.”

MOMMY DAY THE 1ST...

In the United States, '''Mother's Day''' is an annual [[holiday]] celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Mother's Day recognizes [[mother]]s, motherhood and [[maternal bond]]s in general, as well the positive contributions that they make to society. 

Although many [[Mother's Day|Mother's Day celebrations world-wide]] have quite different origins and traditions, most have now been influenced by the American traditions, 

The first attempts to establish a "Mother's Day" in the U.S. were mostly marked by women's peace groups.The History of Mother's Day] from The Legacy Project, a Legacy Center (Canada)  A common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the [[American Civil War]]. There were several limited observances in the 1870s and the 1880s but none achieved resonance beyond the local level.

In 1868 [[Ann Jarvis]] created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" whose purpose was "to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War", and she wanted to expand it into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular.Larossa, 1997,  Her daughter Anna Jarvis would continue her mother's efforts.

In New York City, [[Julia Ward Howe]] led a "Mother's Day" anti-war observance on June 2, 1872,''The First Anniversary of 'Mother's Day'", ''The New York Times,'' June 3, 1874,  "'Mother's Day,' which was inaugurated in this city on the 2nd of June, 1872, by Mrs. Julia Ward Howards[sic], was celebrated last night at Plimpton Hall by a mother's peace meeting... which was accompanied by a [[Mother's Day Proclamation]].  The observance continued in Boston for about 10 years under Howe's personal sponsorship, then died out. Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day for Peace],

Several years later a Mother's Day observance on May 13, 1877 was held in [[Albion, Michigan]] over a dispute related to the [[temperance movement]] from "Albion's Historical Markers", maintained by an Albion, Michigan business</ref> According to local legend, Albion pioneer Juliet Calhoun Blakeley stepped up to complete the sermon of the Rev. Myron Daughterty who was distraught because an anti-temperance group had forced his son and two other [[temperance movement|temperance]] advocates to spend the night in a saloon and become publicly drunk. From the pulpit Blakeley called on other mothers to join her. Blakeley's two sons, both traveling salesmen, were so moved that they vowed to return each year to pay tribute to her and embarked on a campaign to urge their business contacts to do likewise. At their urging, in the early 1880s, the [[Methodist Episcopal Church]] in Albion set aside the second Sunday in May to recognize the special contributions of mothers.

[[Frank E. Hering]], President of the [[Fraternal Order of Eagles]], made the first known public plea for "a national day to honor our mothers" in 1904.

===Holiday establishment===

[[File:Northern Pacific Railway Mother's Day card 1915.JPG|thumb|Mother's Day postcard from [[Northern Pacific Railway]]  in 1915]]

In its present form, Mother's Day was established by [[Anna Jarvis|Anna Marie Jarvis]], with the help of Philadelphia merchant [[John Wanamaker]] following the death of her mother Ann Jarvis on May 9, 1905. A small service was held on May 12, 1907 in the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in [[Grafton, West Virginia]] where Anna's mother had been teaching [[Sunday school]]. But the first "official" service was on May 10, 1908 in the same church, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in the [[Wanamaker's]] store on Philadelphia. The next year the day was reported to be widely celebrated in New York. ''"They organize no crusade in the interests of so-called 'women's rights'..."'']

Jarvis then campaigned to establish Mother's Day first as a U.S. national holiday and then later as an international holiday. ''"The promoters of White Carnation Day have expressed their intention to make the observance international in character..."''], Poverty Bay Herald, 1 June 1909 The holiday was declared officially by the state of West Virginia in 1910, and the rest of states followed quickly.Joseph M. Hawes, Elizabeth F. Shores On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and requesting a proclamation. On May 9, 1914 President [[Woodrow Wilson]] issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.Mother's day: its history, origin, celebration, spirit, and significance as related in prose and Rice, Susan Tracey and [[Robert Haven Schauffler]in 1914 Congress passed a law, which Wilson signed on May 8, 1914, 'designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day', and authorizing and requesting that Wilson issue a proclamation 'calling upon the government officials to display the United States flag on all buildings, and the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.'}}

In 1934, U.S. President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.

In May 2008 the [[U.S. House of Representatives]] voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother's Day, H. Res. 1113: Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day (Vote On Passage) Table Motion to Reconsider: H RES 1113 Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day the first one being unanimous (with 21 members not voting).

The Grafton's church, where the first celebration was held, is now the [[International Mother's Day Shrine]] and is a [[National Historic Landmark]].

[[Dianthus caryophyllus|Carnation]]s have come to represent Mother's Day, since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 of them at its first celebration in 1908. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church = National Historic Landmarks program, Many religious services held later adopted the custom of giving away carnations. This also started the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day. The founder, Anna Jarvis, chose the carnation because it was the favorite flower of her mother.Leigh, 1997,  In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers in Mother's Day, the florists promoted wearing a red carnation if your mother was living, or a white one if she was dead; this was tirelessly promoted until it made its way into the popular observations at churches.

In the United States "Mother's Day Work Clubs" were organized by Anna Jarvis's mother, [[Ann Jarvis|Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis]] (1832–1905), to improve sanitation and health in the area. These clubs also assisted both Union and Confederate encampments controlling a typhoid outbreak. They further conducted a "Mothers' Friendship Day" to reconcile families divided by the Civil War.

Commercialization of the U.S. holiday began very early, and only nine years after the first official Mother's Day had became so rampant that Mother's Day founder Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become, Mother's Day creator likely 'spinning in her grave'  Louisa Taylor, Canwest News Service  date Mother's Day reaches 100th anniversary, The woman who lobbied for this day would berate you for buying a card spending all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration.She decried the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "...wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ... She died later that year.

However, Mother's Day is now one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions, having become the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.