Guide to World Holidays

A number of people have responded to some of my posts, notably my essay on "Choosing to Have a Happy Holiday," by saying they had not heard of some of the holidays I mentioned! Certainly people can get by in the modern world without knowing too much about Saturnalia, but it probably behooves most educated people to know about the holidays being observed by their neighbors, and so I have decided to start this guide to world holidays. I also hope to reveal some interesting things people might not have known about more familiar holidays.

Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17): This religious holiday devoted to the patron saint of Ireland is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. It has been an official church feast day for about 400 years but, in more recent times, has also evolved into a more secular celebration of Irish culture in general that is observed with parades, wearing green clothing, eating, and, naturally, drinking. And, for those who care about such things, participation in it does grant a one-day dispensation on the strictures of Lent for those observing it! Saint Patrick, a 5th century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop, has a number of claims to fame that warrant such revelry in his memory, the main one being the prominent role he played in spreading Christianity throughout the Emerald Isles. He is also credited with banishing all serpents from Ireland, driving them into the sea and to their deaths after they had the impertinence to attack him during his own Lenten rigors. The fact that there are no snakes in Ireland today suggests that he did, in fact, do a pretty good job in this regard.

Songkran (April 13-15): This holiday coincides with the New Year of many calendars of South and Southeast Asia and is celebrated as the traditional start of the New Year in Thailand. This was originally a moveable feast with a date set by astrological calculation but is now fixed; if its days fall on a weekend, the missed days off are taken on the weekdays immediately following. Songkran falls in the hottest time of the year in Thailand, at the end of the dry season. Songkran has traditionally been celebrated as the New Year for many centuries, is believed to have been adapted from an Indian festival, and is observed nationwide. The most famous Songkran celebrations, however, are still in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where it continues for at least six days. It has also become a party for foreigners and an additional reason for many to visit Thailand.

New Year's Day (January 1). Celebrated on the first day of January throughought much of the world, this day marks the beginnning of the new calendar year. Strange as it may be to conceive of, however, this was not always the case, and only started to be observed on January 1 in the English-speaking world between the years A.D. 1600 and 1761! Up until that point, the start of the New Year was generally observed on March 25, and going back into the Middle Ages a number of other dates were used, including March 1, September 1, Christmas Day, and Easter. Many Catholics may also recognize January 1 as the day Jesus was circumcised.

Epiphany (Mostly January 6 in 2013). This Christian feast day celebrates the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ. In the Western Christian tradition, Ephiphany mainly commemorates the visitation the baby Jesus by the Magi, symbolizing Jesus' physical manifestation to the Gentiles, and is generally celebrated either on January 6 as a Holy Day of Obligation or on the first Sunday after January 1. In the Eastern Christians tradition, the holiday celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, recognized as his revelation to the world as the Son of God, and is generally celebrated on January 19. In certain countries, however, Epiphany is celebrated on different days (e.g., January 9 in Columbia).

Seijin no Hi/Coming of Age Day (Japan; January 14 in 2013): Events of this sort date to at least A.D. 714 in Japan and were officially established as an annual holiday in 1948; since 2000, Coming of Age Day has been observed on the second Monday in January. Its purpose is to congratulate and encourage all those who have reached the age of majority which, in Japan, is 20 years old, and when new adults are legally allowed to vote, drive, and smoke. Festivities include ceremonies at local government offices and after-parties among family and friends.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 21 in 2013). This U.S. federal holiday marks the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the U.S. civil rights movement during the 1960s. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's Jan. 15 birthday. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983 and it was first observed on January 20, 1986. Some states initially resisted observing the holiday as such, combining it with other holidays or giving it alternative names, and it was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

Republic Day (India; January 26): Republic Day is a national holiday that marks the adoption of the Constitution of India and the transition of the nation from a British Dominion to a republic on January 26, 1950. It is one of the three national holidays celebrated in India. On this day, the country finally realized the dream of Mahatma Gandhi and the numerous freedom fighters who, fought for and sacrificed their lives for the Independence of their country. It is marked by speeches, parades, and ceremonies, especially in the national capital of New Delhi. It is worth noting, for those who might not have been aware of this, that India -- and not the United States -- is today the largest republic in the world!

Chinese New Year (February 10 in 2013): Also called the Lunar New Year and the Spring Festival, Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. While it is particularly celebrated in mainland China and Taiwan, it is also observed by expatriate communities worldwide in countries that include the United States, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first month, Pinyin, in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th, a day known as Lantern Festival. Because its observance is based on a lunar calendar, it falls each year on a different day of the Western calendar. Vietnamese New Year, or Tết, is based on the same calendar and falls on the same day as Chinese New Year. Each year of the Chinese calendar is said to be influenced by a particular sign of the zodiac, and 2013 is the Year of the Snake. People born under the sign of the Snake are said to be especially acute, attractive, aware, contemplative, cunning, graceful, introspective, intuitive, private, proud, refined, unflappable, vain, simultaneously dark and exciting, but not particularly good at communication, somewhat scheming, and often vicious.

Shrove Tuesday (February 12 in 2013): Better known to many in the United States as Mardi Gras (French for "Fat Tuesday"), this is the tradition in Roman Catholic and Anglican societies of celebrating the day before the start of the austere season of Lent with eating, drinking, and costumed revelry. It is celebrated througout the Western world and also known variously as Carnival in many places (e.g., Italy, Brazil) and Fasching in Germany. The period of celebration leading up to this day, which ends abruptly at midnight, varies from place to place and can be a day, a week, or even a few months. As a point of commentary, it bears mentioning that holidays like this are at least implicitly intended to let normal people periodically blow off steam. So, while Mardis Gras is often presented as an event created for party animals this is not really the case, as the most hedonistic can carouse whenever they want and it is the people who do not do so regularly who need observances like this one. Holidays like this have, in any case, been observed since time immemorial in most societies and subcultures that eschew such celebrations simply contribute to the misery of their members and drive them to partake of their pleasures more covertly.

Saint Valentine's Day (February 14): Generally known simply as Valentine's Day, this secular holiday is observed in more than 100 countries worldwide and is named in honor of two or three early Christian saints. This holiday was established by Pope Gelasius I in A.D. 496 and acquired its romantic connotations during the Middle Ages and, by the 1400s, was observed by the exchange of flowers, candy, and cards between lovers. Its name and history notwithstanding, however, Valentine's Day is no longer observed as a religious holiday, and the Catholic Church removed it from its list of official holidays in 1969. It also bears mentioning that the figure of Cupid, the winged child associated with Valentine's Day, is in fact the ancient Roman god of desire, pointing once again to the pagan roots of a seemingly modern holiday.

PopeWatch 2013: Blowing Black Smoke

VATICAN CITY -- A plume of black smoke issuing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel signaled that the first day of the College of Cardinals' papal conclave had ended and that, predictably, its members had not yet selected a replacement for retired Pope Benedict XVI. The princes of the Catholic Church, however, are not the only ones blowing smoke, and over the past month there has been an abundance of idle, often whimsical, and sometimes even feel-good chatter about who the next pope will be. With an ever-canny sense of how things are rather than how people want them to be, the editors of Religion, Politics, and Sex decided to look at the presumed frontrunners in the papal race and make our predictions not just on who the next pope will be but also on who it definitely will not be.

The members of the conclave are, of course, literally sworn to secrecy in this regard, so public speculation falls to lower-ranking clergy, the media, and bookmakers. Some of their top choices, however, are so absolutely unlikely that they have presumably been proposed merely as red herrings to boost the payoff for bets on candidates they think actually have a chance or to jolly along various special interest groups.

There has also been quite a bit of discussion about the moral characteristics of various candidates and factors such as the presumable impact of things like their roles in either covering up or exposing the Church's child sex abuse scandals. But these factors have no bearing on whether a candidate would make what is considered to be a good pope and are therefore irrelevant and will have no impact whatsoever on the decision reached by the conclave. If the new pope is a genuinely good person, wants to make protecting children from predatory priests his cause celebre, etc., that is all great, but it has nothing to do with his viability as a candidate.

Following are some of the top choices whose names are being bandied about on the news. We are presenting them here in reverse order, from least to most likely to be elected.



* Cardinal Peter Turkson (Ghana). Really? No, really? Anyone suggesting that Turkson has any chance at all of being elected pope is doing so for purposes of misdirection, to lead Africans in particular and blacks in general to feel more important within the Church than they really are, or as a joke. His qualities as a Church leader are, in fact, completely meaningless simply because he is black. This may seem like an extreme contention, but consider what we learned when Obama got elected, e.g., that a certain proportion of the population will become mentally unhinged when a black is elected to a particular high office for the first time. A global sex abuse scandal is one thing and something the Church can obviously survive just fine, but a black man in a miter would be the death of Catholicism as we know it. Just as Americans who were admittedly almost illiterate before Obama was elected suddenly affected expert knowledge of Constitutional law to justify their irrational hatred for the first black U.S. president, closet racists throughout the Catholic Church would suddenly start spouting references to obscure canon laws disseminated by the plethora of hatemongering schismatic websites that would pop up. Catholicism would experience a literal decimation, with one in 10 of its members abandoning the Church immediately, and there is a reasonable chance that any number of pretender popes would be elected within particular geographical areas. The cardinals are more likely to drink a vat of poisoned Kool-Aid than propagate such a monumental disaster.

* Cardinal Timothy Dolan (United States). Almost no chance. Americans are notoriously bad at seeing themselves as others see them and do not realize that the United States is perceived by many people throughout the world as militaristic, imperialistic, hypocritical, and a busy-body. Election of an American would lead to widespread perception that the Vatican had been suborned by the United States and this is something that the conclave is going to be sensitive to.

* Marc Oullet (Canada). Slightly better chance than Dolan, but he is still a Norde Americano and from a nation that is often seen as a client state of the United States, so the fear of appearance of undue political influence on the Vatican remains a consideration.

* Peter Erdo (Hungary). OK, now we're getting on track, and this guy dodges all the bullets of the afore-mentioned candidates, making him a viable contender. But the Vatican has already had its "Eastern European" ticket punched in recent memory so there is no strategic advantage associated with electing him.

* Odilo Scherer (Brazil). This one might actually have a reasonable chance. Sure, he is a South American, but is just about as white as most Italians, and the sense is that the powerbrokers in the Church could use him as a tool (e.g., much the way George W. Bush was puppeted by rightwing business interests). This would also be a sop to Third Worlders and give them an inflated sense of their place in the Church.

* Angelo Scola. This is the one! Or, someone who is so much like him as to be almost indistinguishable. One can almost sense a zeitgeist, if not a heilig geist, among the Italian cardinals, a palpable desire to "take back the papacy." Germans and Poles have had their time in the sun and they are as exotic as this bunch is ever going to want to deal with, so it is time for the pendulum to swing back toward what the papacy has been for the majority of its history.



So, those are our predictions! If this were like a U.S. presidential election you would be able to see the candidates at the top of our list dropping off one by one, but with this contest we won't know until it is done. In the meantime, go ahead and keep giggling about the black guy, sagely speculating about the Brazilian, etc., and tell us that we're wrong now -- because in a couple of days it will be too late and we will have an Italian pope again.

What Would YOU ask Jodi Arias?

Week after week, the Jodi Arias murder trial drags on, replete with sordid details that were shocking the first time we heard them but which have become increasingly prosaic as we become progressively more desensitized to them. Anybody who has actually read a book by the Marquis de Sade knows what I mean.

For anyone who has not been keeping up, the now demure femme fatale is charged with butchering boyfriend Travis "T Dog" Alexander like a hog, cutting his throat and stabbing him 29 times, after suffering years of increasingly degrading sexual abuse at his hands. It should all be more fun to listen to than it is.

Today, however, CNN finally posed an interesting question: What would you ask Jodi Arias? Wow! A thought provoking query indeed, and one I did not immediately have an answer for. "Why should we believe you now?" was the predictable and boring question that seemed most pressing to the news networks talking heads but did not seem very satisfactory. So, after convening the best legal consultation team we could put together on short notice, Religion, Politics, and Sex compiled the following short list of better questions that we would be inclined to ask the murderous minx.

* What took you so long?

* Hey, baby. You from around here?

* Now wait ... Why did you date someone named "T Dog"?

* So, when you were blonde, did cuffs and collars match?

* Do you practice witchcraft? (Hahaha! We saw this idiotic question posted online and it just seemed to good to not include!)

That's all we've got for now! We will certainly add more questions as our dream interview evolves. In the meantime, please tell us what YOU would ask Jodi Arias and we will add it to our list!