Things to celebrate!

Hi, there are a few "holidays" type days coming up you may want to know about if you don't.

Valentines Day, Sunday, Feb. 14

Chinese New Year is also on Feb. 14 this year - Gung Hey Fat Choy! - Year of the Tiger

Mardi Gras is this week, Fat Tuesday is Tuesday, Feb. 16 this year - personally, I'm going to go with some friends on "Skinny Monday" to celebrate, I like the symmetry of it.

More later!

To everyone! May you feel love in your HEART and joy in your life. Lots of hugs all around... :-))

If you're interested, here's a clip from the wikipedia site about Valentine's Day:

"Saint Valentine's Day (commonly shortened to Valentine's Day) is an annual holiday held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The holiday is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). The holiday first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. Modern Valentine's Day symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards."


For more info go to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day

This site is an interesting historical look at Valentine's Day through the ages and in different countries.

If you're interested, you may want to check out this Wikipedia site about CNY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

And may our president and his cabinet et al. make wise and beneficial choices for us!

Thanks to the forefathers that did help to make America free and honored our being brave... May we continue to be so!

If you're interested, here's a USA today link to "the Oval" a site dedicated to the goings on of the President and others at the White House:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/02/the-presidents-day-on-presidents-day/1

Also, here's a link to an American History site - currently about President's Day

http://www.patriotism.org/presidents_day/

Woot! We celebrated the Lunar New Year here over the weekend. It was so much fun. There were a lot of relatives over, lots of food, and great times.

FYI: Here's a little background about Mardi Gras


Mardi Gras always falls on the Tuesday that is 46 days before Easter. It is always the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent.

Carnival refers to the season of revelry before Mardi Gras. It begins officially on Jan. 6, which is known as Twelfth Night or Kings' Day, so named because it falls 12 days after Christmas on the day the Wise Men are said to have reached Bethlehem.

Carnival celebrations fall into two categories: public and private. The private celebrations are balls, held by clubs called krewes. Some krewes let anyone join, while others are exclusive and made up mostly of FONOF (fine old New Orleans families).

The first Carnival ball of the season is always the
Twelfth Night Ball, on Jan. 6.

The public celebrations take the form of parades, sponsored by the same krewes that hold the balls for members only. Not every krewe has a parade, although every krewe will throw a party for its members. A very few krewes allow the public to buy tickets to their balls - Endymion and Orpheus, for example. About 70 groups in a four-parish area around New Orleans hold parades.

Most krewes are named for figures in Greek mythology, like Bacchus for the god of wine or Orpheus for the god of music (no coincidence the latter was co-founded by Harry Connick Jr.)

The parade season officially begins on the second Friday before Mardi Gras, although the parade calendar is expanding. At the beginning of the season, parades are held on weekends only, then become more frequent until the week prior to Mardi Gras, when there's at least a parade a day.

There are nine parades on Mardi Gras, most notably Rex.

Rex (don't say "king of"; it's redundant) - always a prominent New Orleans businessman - is considered the king of Mardi Gras. (You should, therefore, sneer when you hear some Hollywood matinee idol announce to Jay Leno that he will be "king of the Mardi Gras." He won't.)

Every parade has a theme, usually borrowed from mythology, history or Hollywood. Most parades have mock royalty, kings and queens and dukes and duchesses, either drawn from the ranks of the krewe's members or celebrities (hence the Jay Leno clown above).

All parade riders throw trinkets - beads, doubloons, small toys, candy - from the floats to the crowds. These are called "throws." Parades consist of anywhere from 10 to 40 floats carrying krewe members, marching bands, dance groups, costumed characters and the like. Some parades are small and suburban, others downtown and lavish.

The colors of Carnival are purple, green and gold, chosen in 1872 by that year's Rex. The 1892 Rex parade gave the official colors meaning: purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power.

The one ubiquitous food of the Carnival season is the king cake. Sweet roll-like dough is shaped into a big circle, cooked and brushed with purple, green and gold sugar or icing. Then a plastic baby, representing the Christ child, is tucked inside. Whoever gets the piece of cake containing the baby must, by tradition, provide the next king cake. Nowadays, king cakes come with a variety of fillings from chocolate to pineapple.


More info about Mardi Gras at NOLA.com: Mardi Gras

Saint Patrick's Day Trivia (adapted from Wikapedia) - Enjoy!


"Saint Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland (along with St. Brigid). Originally born in Roman Britain, he was captured and enslaved by Irish raiders when he was sixteen. He escaped and subsequently entered the church, became a Deacon and eventually became a missionary in Ireland.

The Shamrock, is the symbol of Ireland. Actually it’s a 'three-leafed Old White Clover.' The diminutive version of the Irish word for 'clover' - 'seamair' - is 'seamaróg', which has been anglicized as 'shamrock', representing a close version of the original Irish pronunciation. The fabled four-leafed clover is often confused with the shamrock, but while the four-leaf clover is a symbol of good luck, the three-leafed shamrock is mainly a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

Shamrock’s were traditionally used for medicinal properties and were a popular Victorian Motif. Royal Irish Regiment soldiers wear a sprig of shamrock on SP Day, as it is their emblem. By royal decree, Shamrocks are exported to wherever the regiment is stationed throughout the world.

Irish, and non-Irish people celebrate worldwide, with the theme being all things Irish and, by association, the color Green. Traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched. People celebrate by wearing green or orange, eating Irish and/or Green foods, imbibing Irish drink (such as Guinness) and attending parades. Corned beef and cabbage is the most common meal eaten in the United States for St. Patrick's Day, even though historically, corned beef and cabbage is an American (rather than a traditionally Irish) meal.

Irish colonists brought Saint Patrick's Day to what is now the United States. The first civic and public U.S. celebration of SP Day was in Boston in 1737. The Charitable Irish Society of Boston organized what was the first SP Day Parade in the colonies in 1761. New York's first SP Day Parade was held in 1762, when Irish soldiers in the British army marched through the city. Today, New York City holds the largest St. Patrick's Day parade.