Celebrate

On my birthday, I give lunch to poor/orphan children and there happiness is the real happiness of my life.

I always enjoyed a good birthday party but after spending time in Kibera Slum in Nairobi last fall where one million people live on one square mile of land in poverty like you can’t imagine or believe unless you’ve been there to see it………..I now do what I can to make even a small contribution to making life better for the children I saw there…..and not just with things like a birthday party, but changing my priorities and getting back to basics. If everyone just did a little!!

1)Christmas
2)Thanksgiving
3)Halloween
4)Labor Day
5)New Years
6)Martin Luther King Day
7)St.Patrick’s day
8)Valentine’s Day
9)Memorial Day
10) 4th of July
What are the traditions to all of these holidays and why do we celebrate them and who or what do they honor?

1. Honor the birth of Jesus Christ, 2. A feast with family and friends to thank God for their blessings. 3. A fun fill day with witches & goblins and Trick or Treater. 4. For resting and relaxation. 5. Ending the old year and bring in the New one. 6. A very special day to honor REV DR King’s birthday for all his loyalties in fighting for equal right /civil rights among all mankind. 7. An Irish celebration where people wear green or a clover to bring Good Luck! 8. A Sweetheart Day. 9. A day to remember all your love ones, friends, and soldiers who are no longer with us. If possible, visit their grave site. 10. When President Lincoln signed the Declaration od Independence. Picnics and Family Reunions, fireworks (red, white & blue).

I think they burn something… I’m not sure. The answer with most info gets best answer:) Thanks!

Walpurgis Night! It’s April 30. It’s a celebration of the coming of spring and you see bonfires built all over Scandinavian countries on that night. You sing songs about the end of the cold, dark winter (winter in any Scandinavian country is pretty horrific – it’s why our suicide rate is so high), give speeches or read poems about the coming green leaves and warmer days and – have parties! w00t! All in all, it’s a nice way to greet the spring. It is generally a community event, but if you can be in a college town for that night, I highly recommend it. =)

Will you be celebrating on New Year’s Eve despite the recent events in Gaza?

Muslims do not traditionally "celebrate" the beginning of a new year, but they do acknowledge the passing of time, and take time to reflect on their own mortality.
Many entertainers in the Arab world postponed their New Year’s celebrations as a show of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza following months of Hamass offensive against the Jews.

New Year events scheduled to take place in Egypt, Bahrain and Jordan have been postponed.

Yes and no. I celebrate it as a cultural holiday so that I can be with my family, but it no longer holds religious implications for me. (My religious winter holiday is Yule, which is on December 22 this year.) For my family, it is both religious and cultural.

Christmas (Christ’s Mass) is not mentioned in the Bible because the first recorded use of the word occurred in 1038 CE, roughly 900 years after the gospels were written. There’s been a debate over whether or not Christ was even born in the winter. Some people think he was born in the spring.

One of the more accepted ideas for Christmas’ date is that the early church assimilated some pagan holidays by giving them Christian meanings. This made conversions more appealing for many people who didn’t want to give up their cultural traditions and customs.

It’s true, Christmas, along with the date and many of the secular symbols (red and green, mistletoe, holly & ivy, pine tree, Yule log, gifts, etc) is originally pagan and not mentioned in the Bible. This is why some sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, do not celebrate it. But most Christian sects have celebrated it for generations as the accepted birthdate of Christ.

For religious reasons, my husband and I have decided to no longer celebrate christmas, and easter. ( we celebrate passover and day of unlevened bread instead) And we do celebrate most all other celebrations(anniversary, birthdays) .We have a young daughter (6 ) And I wanted to know what are some good things to do around dec 25th , since we no longer celebrate christmas, santa claus , and the xmas tree.

how about going away for xmas and stay in a hotel that way there will be a pool to keep ur daughter entertained and maybe a show on the evening to keep u adults occupied. sorry its not much of an answer .

As we all know, the celebration of Christmas and Easter was added to the Christian Religion by the Roman emperor Constantine. Which are actually Tannenbaum and the Spring Equinox of the Pagan Religion.
So the question I am asking is, how do I strip the Pagan Holidays and still celebrate Jesus’ birth and death? How did Christians celebrate the birth and death of Jesus Christ before the emperor Constantine?
I meant the winter solstice not Tannenbaum.

"… it must be said that an Apostolic Liturgy in the sense of an arrangement of prayers and ceremonies, like our present ritual of the Mass, did not exist. For some time the Eucharistic Service was in many details fluid and variable. It was not all written down and read from fixed forms, but in part composed by the officiating bishop. As for ceremonies, at first they were not elaborated as now. All ceremonial evolves gradually out of certain obvious actions done at first with no idea of ritual, but simply because they had to he done for convenience. The bread and wine were brought to the altar when they were wanted, the lessons were read from a place where they could best be heard, hands were washed because they were soiled. Out of these obvious actions ceremony developed, just as our vestments developed out of the dress of the first Christians. It follows then of course that, when there was no fixed Liturgy at all, there could be no question of absolute uniformity among the different Churches.

And yet the whole series of actions and prayers did not depend solely on the improvisation of the celebrating bishop. Whereas at one time scholars were inclined to conceive the services of the first Christians as vague and undefined, recent research shows us a very striking uniformity in certain salient elements of the service at a very early date. The tendency among students now is to admit something very like a regulated Liturgy, apparently to a great extent uniform in the chief cities, back even to the first or early second century. In the first place the fundamental outline of the rite of the Holy Eucharist was given by the account of the Last Supper. What our Lord had done then, that same thing He told His followers to do in memory of Him. It would not have been a Eucharist at all if the celebrant had not at least done as our Lord did the night before He died. So we have everywhere from the very beginning at least this uniform nucleus of a Liturgy: bread and wine are brought to the celebrant in vessels (a plate and a cup); he puts them on a table — the altar; standing before it in the natural attitude of prayer he takes them in his hands, gives thanks, as our Lord had done, says again the words of institution, breaks the Bread and gives the consecrated Bread and Wine to the people in communion. The absence of the words of institution in the Nestorian Rite is no argument against the universality of this order. It is a rite that developed quite late; the parent liturgy has the words.

But we find much more than this essential nucleus in use in every Church from the first century. The Eucharist was always celebrated at the end of a service of lessons, psalms, prayers, and preaching, which was itself merely a continuation of the service of the synagogue. So we have everywhere this double function; first a synagogue service Christianized, in which the holy books were read, psalms were sung, prayers said by the bishop in the name of all (the people answering "Amen" in Hebrew, as had their Jewish forefathers), and homilies, explanations of what had been read, were made by the bishop or priests, just as they had been made in the synagogues by the learned men and elders (e.g., Luke 4:16-27). This is what was known afterwards as the Liturgy of the Catechumens. Then followed the Eucharist, at which only the baptized were present. Two other elements of the service in the earliest time soon disappeared. One was the Love-feast (agape) that came just before the Eucharist; the other was the spiritual exercises, in which people were moved by the Holy Ghost to prophesy, speak in divers tongues, heal the sick by prayer, and so on. This function — to which 1 Corinthians 14:1-14, and the Didache, 10:7, etc., refer — obviously opened the way to disorders; from the second century it gradually disappears. The Eucharistic Agape seems to have disappeared at about the same time. The other two functions remained joined, and still exist in the liturgies of all rites. In them the service crystallized into more or less set forms from the beginning. In the first half the alternation of lessons, psalms, collects, and homilies leaves little room for variety. For obvious reasons a lesson from a Gospel was read last, in the place of honour as the fulfilment of all the others; it was preceded by other readings whose number, order, and arrangement varied considerably (see LESSONS IN THE LITURGY). A chant of some kind would very soon accompany the entrance of the clergy and the beginning of the service. We also hear very soon of litanies of intercession said by one person to each clause of which the people answer with some short formula (see ANTIOCHENE LITURGY; ALEXANDRINE LITURGY; KYRIE ELEISON). The place and number of the homilies would also vary for a long time. It is in the second part of the service, the Eucharist itself, that we find a very striking crystallization of the forms, and a uniformity even in the first or second century that goes far beyond the mere nucleus described above.

Already in the New Testament — apart from the account of the Last Supper — there are some indexes that point to liturgical forms.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09306a.htm

"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Smyrnaeans, 7,1 (c. A.D. 110).

"[T]he bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord, and the cup His blood…" Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV:18,4 (c. A.D. 200).

"For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh." Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 (A.D. 110-165).

"He acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as his own blood, from which he bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of creation) he affirmed to be his own body, from which he gives increase to our bodies." Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V:2,2 (c. A.D. 200).
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/the_eucharist.html#tradition-II

What do you think of the holiday known as Christmas,do you celebrate it or not, or do you skip the holiday because you have extreme hate towards it after reading and finding out the truth about Christmas,
I hate that I learned the truth behind Christmas because now I have a feeling that I should stop celebrating it,but I have always celebrated Christmas.

Christmas is definitely not about Christ. I am a born-again Christian and I understand that Jesus was placed into Christmas by Pope Julius I to try to convert the heathen – because they celebrated the winter solstice, which was Christmas before Christ. It was a religion made up by the Catholics. Winter solstice was celebrated with excess drinking, orgies and ungodly worship.

Scriptural references: (Jeremiah 10:1-5)
1 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:
2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
—

I wouldn’t place a Christmas tree in your house. God forbids it.

Would you rather celebrate Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year) or you birthday every day?

Nothing. The occurrence of holidays is what makes it special. If Christmas was everyday, I would stop looking forward to it. Soon I might even get sick of it.

How do peopl celebrate easter in the UK?
Do people celebrate easter in the UK? Shall I send egreeting to my british friends?

How do people celebrate easter in the UK?
My friends are not relegious! Would it seem odd if I sent them an e greeting?

Nobody I know really bothers, maybe an easter egg hunt, but thats about it..