Tuesday, December 31, 2019
5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations
5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations
There’s nothing new about New Year’s. Festivals marking the beginning of the calendar have existed for millennia, and a few are still actively observed by millions of people around the world. Get the facts on the ways 5 ancient civilizations rang in the New Year.These early New Year’s celebrations often had important social, political and religious implications, but in some cultures the holiday traditions were not so different from the champagne, parties and fireworks of today. Get the facts on the ways 5 ancient civilizations rang in the New Year.
1. Babylonian Akitu
Following the first new moon after the vernal equinox in late March, the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia would honor the rebirth of the natural world with a multi-day festival called Akitu. This early New Year’s celebration dates back to around 2000 B.C., and is believed to have been deeply intertwined with religion and mythology. During the Akitu, statues of the gods were paraded through the city streets, and rites were enacted to symbolize their victory over the forces of chaos. Through these rituals the Babylonians believed the world was symbolically cleansed and recreated by the gods in preparation for the new year and the return of spring.
One fascinating aspect of the Akitu involved a kind of ritual humiliation endured by the Babylonian king. This peculiar tradition saw the king brought before a statue of the god Marduk, stripped of his royal regalia and forced to swear that he had led the city with honor. A high priest would then slap the monarch and drag him by his ears in the hope of making him cry. If royal tears were shed, it was seen as a sign that Marduk was satisfied and had symbolically extended the king’s rule. Some historians have since argued that these political elements suggest the Akitu was used by the monarchy as a tool for reaffirming the king’s divine power over his people.
2. Ancient Roman Celebration of Janus
The Roman New Year also originally corresponded with the vernal equinox, but years of tampering with the solar calendar eventually saw the holiday established on its more familiar date of January 1. For the Romans, the month of January carried a special significance. Its name was derived from the two-faced deity Janus, the god of change and beginnings. Janus was seen as symbolically looking back at the old and ahead to the new, and this idea became tied to the concept of transition from one year to the next.
Romans would celebrate January 1 by giving offerings to Janus in the hope of gaining good fortune for the new year. This day was seen as setting the stage for the next twelve months, and it was common for friends and neighbors to make a positive start to the year by exchanging well wishes and gifts of figs and honey with one another. According to the poet Ovid, most Romans also chose to work for at least part of New Year’s Day, as idleness was seen as a bad omen for the rest of the year.
3. Ancient Egyptian Wepet Renpet
Ancient Egyptian culture was closely tied to the Nile River, and it appears their New Year corresponded with its annual flood. According the Roman writer Censorinus, the Egyptian New Year was predicted when Sirius—the brightest star in the night sky—first became visible after a 70-day absence. Better known as a heliacal rising, this phenomenon typically occurred in mid-July just before the annual inundation of the Nile River, which helped ensure that farmlands remained fertile for the coming year. Egyptians celebrated this new beginning with a festival known as Wepet Renpet, which means “opening of the year.” The New Year was seen as a time of rebirth and rejuvenation, and it was honored with feasts and special religious rites.
Not unlike many people today, the Egyptians may have also used this as an excuse for getting a bit tipsy. Recent discoveries at the Temple of Mut show that during the reign of Hatshepsut the first month of the year played host to a “Festival of Drunkenness.” This massive party was tied to the myth of Sekhmet, a war goddess who had planned to kill all of humanity until the sun god Ra tricked her into drinking herself unconscious. In honor of mankind’s salvation, the Egyptians would celebrate with music, sex, revelry and—perhaps most important of all—copious amounts of beer.
4. Chinese New Year
One of the oldest traditions still celebrated today is Chinese New Year, which is believed to have originated over 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty. The holiday began as a way of celebrating the new beginnings of the spring planting season, but it later became entangled with myth and legend. According to one popular tale, there was once a bloodthirsty creature called Nian—now the Chinese word for “year”—that preyed on villages every New Year. In order to frighten the hungry beast, the villagers took to decorating their homes with red trimmings, burning bamboo and making loud noises. The ruse worked, and the bright colors and lights associated with scaring off Nian eventually became integrated into the celebration.
Festivities traditionally last 15 days and tend to center on the home and the family. People clean their houses to rid them of bad luck, and some repay old debts as a way of settling the previous year’s affairs. In order to encourage an auspicious start to the year they also decorate their doors with paper scrolls and gather with relatives for a feast. Following the invention of gunpowder in the 10th century, the Chinese were also the first to ring in the New Year with fireworks. Since Chinese New Year is still based on a lunar calendar that dates back to the second millennium BC, the holiday typically falls in late January or early February on the second new moon after the winter solstice. Each year is associated with one of 12 zodiacal animals: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
5. Nowruz
While it is still celebrated in Iran and other parts of the Middle East and Asia, the roots of Nowruz (or “New Day”) reach far back into antiquity. Often called the “Persian New Year,” this 13-day spring festival falls on or around the vernal equinox in March and is believed to have originated in modern day Iran as part of the Zoroastrian religion. Official records of Nowruz did not appear until the 2nd century, but most historians believe its celebration dates back at least as far as the 6th century B.C. and the rule of the Achaemenid Empire. Unlike many other ancient Persian festivals, Nowruz persisted as an important holiday even after Iran’s conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 BC and the rise of Islamic rule in the 7th century A.D.
Ancient observances of Nowruz focused on the rebirth that accompanied the return of spring. Monarchs would use the holiday to host lavish banquets, dispense gifts and hold audiences with their subjects. Other traditions included feasts, exchanging presents with family members and neighbors, lighting bonfires, dyeing eggs and sprinkling water to symbolize creation. One unique ritual that arose around the 10th century involved electing a “Nowruzian Ruler”: a commoner who would pretend to be king for several days before being “dethroned” near the end of the festival. Nowruz has evolved considerably over time, but many of its ancient traditions—particularly the use of bonfires and colored eggs—remain a part of the modern holiday, which is observed by an estimated 300 million people each year.
The Commie Pope displeased about Italian soccer coach’s religious signs
Pope Francis accused the coach of the Italian football team ... of making the sign of the cross.
Roberto Mancini no longer allows himself to make the sign of the cross on a football field, so that the pope does not “get angry”.
Shouldn’t a pope be the first promoter of the Catholic religion? It is no longer the case, it seems. In an interview with Italian TV TG5, the coach of the Italian football team reported a statement by Pope Francis which is – to say the least – a bit disturbing, reported the site Breizh info.
Therefore, according to the former international footballer, the sovereign pontiff had encouraged him to no longer show his Christian faith on a football field. “I was doing this hoping that nothing would happen during the match, then we went to see the pope. He said, ‘Why are you doing the sign of the cross, don’t you have any other thoughts at that time?’. So since that day, I don’t do it anymore. I would not want the pope to get angry,” he said.
Roberto Mancini has been Catholic since his childhood, and has never hidden it. As a youngster, his life “was divided between school, home and parish,” he told Italian television. But since this Pope’s intervention, he will no longer allow himself to publicly express his faith.
However, as Breizh info pointed out, the bishop of Rome seems to be attached to identity.
Thus, in April 2019, he declared: “We are not mushrooms, born alone: we are people born in a family, in a people and often this liquid culture makes us forget belonging to a people. One criticism I would make is the lack of...
Six-Time Deported Illegal Alien Accused of Killing Colorado Grandmother
Juan Sanchez, a Mexican illegal alien who has already been deported from the United States six times over the last decade, was arrested last week and charged with vehicular homicide and fleeing the scene of an accident after he allegedly hit and killed Annette Conquering Bear, a grandmother, while she was walking home from Walgreens, 9 News reported.
Sanchez, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials revealed, was deported from the U.S. twice in 2002, three times in 2008, and in 2012. Sometime after his last deportation, he illegally re-entered the...
Southern Poverty Law Center Silent on Domestic Terror Attack Against Jews
Doesn’t fit the narrative.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has remained completely silent about the domestic terror attack against Hasidic Jews, presumably because it was carried out by a non-white person.
Grafton E. Thomas entered a a rabbi’s home and stabbed five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York City on Saturday night.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo quickly announced that the stabbings were an act of domestic terrorism “spurred by hate.”
Another attack earlier this month on a kosher grocery store in New Jersey was carried out by assailants motivated by black supremacist ideology.
Despite the SPLC constantly fanning the flames of hysteria over domestic extremism, the organization has not commented on Saturday’s attack.
Nothing from the SPLC about last night’s domestic terrorist attack against Hasidic Jews. pic.twitter.com/n9gJXc6R0H— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) December 29, 2019
“Nothing from the SPLC about last night’s domestic terrorist attack against Hasidic Jews,” remarked Mike Cernovich.
Indeed, a brief perusal of the SPLC’s Twitter account contains no mention whatsoever of the attack two days after...
The Invention of Hispanics
America’s surging politics of victimhood and identitarian division did not emerge organically or inevitably, as many believe. Nor are these practices the result of irrepressible demands by minorities for recognition, or for redress of past wrongs, as we are constantly told.
Those explanations are myths, spread by the activists, intellectuals, and philanthropists who set out deliberately, beginning at midcentury, to redefine our country. Their goal was mass mobilization for political ends, and one of their earliest targets was the Mexican American community.
These activists strived purposefully to turn Americans of this community (who mostly resided in the Southwestern states) against their countrymen, teaching them first to see themselves as a racial minority and then to think of themselves as the core of a panethnic victim group of “Hispanics”—a fabricated term with no basis in ethnicity, culture, or race.
This transformation took effort—because many Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to “white” in the very next census.
The most prominent Mexican American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.” Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.
Such views may surprise readers today, but this was the way many Mexican Americans saw their race until midcentury.
They had the law on their side: A federal district court ruled in In Re Ricardo Rodríguez (1896) that Mexican Americans were to be considered white for the purposes of citizenship concerns.
And so as late as 1947, the judge in another federal case (Mendez v. Westminster) ruled that segregating Mexican American students in remedial schools in Orange County was unconstitutional because it represented social disadvantage, not racial discrimination. At that time, Mexican Americans were as white before the law as they were in their own estimation.
Half a century later, many Mexican Americans had been persuaded of a very different origin story. Among the persuaders-in-chief was Paul Ylvisaker, head of the Public Affairs Program at New York’s wealthy Ford Foundation during the 1950s and ’60s.
Though little known today, Ylvisaker wielded great power and influence to advance a particular vision of social justice inspired partly by socialism and its politics of resentment. Ylvisaker hoped, as he later put it in a 1991 essay, “The Future of Hispanic Nonprofits,” that Mexican Americans could be organized into a...
Obama, Trump Tie as Most Admired Man in 2019, Melania Trump Places Second As Most Admired Woman..
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Trump's percentage improves, ties Barack Obama's
- Barack Obama has record-tying 12th first-place finish
- Michelle Obama most admired woman for second year in a row
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Barack Obama and Donald Trump are tied this year as the most admired man. It is Obama's 12th time in the top spot versus the first for Trump. Michelle Obama is the most admired woman for the second year in a row.
Each year since 1948, Gallup has asked Americans to name, in an open-ended fashion, which man and woman living anywhere in the world they admire most. This year's results are based on a Dec. 2-15 poll.
Americans' choice for most admired man this year is sharply divided along party lines: 41% of Democrats name Obama, while 45% of Republicans choose Trump. Relatively few Democrats choose Trump and relatively few Republicans pick Obama, while independents' choices are divided about equally between the two men.
After Obama and Trump, no other man was mentioned by more than 2% of respondents. The remainder of the top 10 for men this year includes former President Jimmy Carter, businessman Elon Musk, philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Pope Francis, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Rep. Adam Schiff, the Dalai Lama, and investor Warren Buffett.
Eleven percent of Americans named a relative or friend as the man they admire most; 18% named some other living man; and 25% did not name anyone.
The incumbent president has typically been Americans' choice as the most admired man, having earned the distinction in 58 of the 72 prior Gallup polls. When the incumbent president is not the choice, it is usually because he is unpopular politically, which was the case for Trump in 2017 (36% approval rating) and 2018 (40%).
Trump is more popular now than he was in the past two years, with a 45% job approval rating, among his best as president. Coincident with the rise in his job approval rating, the 18% of Americans currently naming Trump as the most admired man is also up, from 13% in 2018 and 14% in 2017. Increased mentions of Trump as the most admired man have come almost exclusively among his fellow Republicans -- 32% of Republicans named Trump in 2018 and 35% did so in 2017.
Obama's 18% mentions among U.S. adults as the most admired man are in line with his 2018 (19%) and 2017 (17%) figures, all of which are high for a former president. Dwight Eisenhower is the only other former president who received double-digit mentions at any point after leaving office.
The post-presidency popularity for Obama and Eisenhower allowed each to finish first a record 12 times. Each man was named most admired man in the year he was elected president and all eight years he was in office, plus three additional years. Obama has finished first during the first three years after he left office, while Eisenhower won once before he ran for president (1950) and twice after leaving office (1967 and 1968).
Michelle Obama Only Woman in Double Digits
Historically, it has been more common for a former first lady to be named the most admired woman than for a former president to be named most admired man. Michelle Obama is the sixth former first lady to win, along with Eleanor Roosevelt (1948-1950 and 1952-1961), Jacqueline Kennedy (1963-1966), Mamie Eisenhower (1969-1970), Betty Ford (1978) and Hillary Clinton (2002-2017).
The 10% naming Obama this year is down from 15% last year. The 2018 poll was conducted shortly after she released her bestselling autobiography.
Current first lady Melania Trump finished second this year, mentioned by 5%, with former...
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