Christmas, Christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus. The English term Christmas (“mass on Christ’s day”) is of fairly recent origin. The earlier term Yule may have derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter […]
Each December there are numerous inquiries about the festival Kwanzaa. This celebration is not a festival originating in any of the 55 African countries nor is it an "African" Christmas celebration. Kwanzaa is an African-Americans celebration of life from 26 December to 1 January. Dr. Maulana Karenga introduced the festival in 1966 to the United […]
Shōgatsu, public holiday observed in Japan on January 1–3 (though celebrations sometimes last for the entire week), marking the beginning of a new calendar year. On the eve of the new year, temple bells ring 108 […]
New Year festival, any of the social, cultural, and religious observances worldwide that celebrate the beginning of the new year. Such festivals are among the oldest and the most universally observed. The earliest known record of a New Year festival dates from about 2000 BCE in Mesopotamia, where in Babylonia the new year (Akitu) began with the new moon after the spring equinox (mid-March) and in Assyria […]
Saint Basil the Great, (born AD 329, Caesarea Mazaca, Cappadocia—died Jan. 1, 379, Caesarea; Western feast day January 2; Eastern feast day January 1), Early church father. Born into a Christian family in Cappadocia, he studied at Caesarea, Constantinople, and Athens and later established a monastic settlement on the family estate at Annesi. He opposed Arianism, which […]
All Souls’ Day, in Roman Catholicism, a day for commemoration of all the faithful departed, those baptized Christians who are believed to be in purgatory because they died with the guilt of lesser sins on […]
Each year, we work to get Braille into the hands of more blind people. January 4 marks World Braille Day in celebration of its creator, Louis Braille. Every day, thousands of blind people use Braille for everything from shopping lists to labels for canned goods, from reading novels to solving math and scientific equations, from learning […]
Epiphany, (from Greek epiphaneia, “manifestation”), Christian holiday commemorating the first manifestation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, represented by the Magi, and the manifestation of his divinity, as it occurred at his baptism in the Jordan River and at his first miracle, at Cana […]
Chinese New Year, annual 15-day festival in China and Chinese communities around the world that begins with the new moon that occurs sometime between January 21 and February 20 according to Western calendars. Festivities last until the following full moon. The holiday is sometimes called the Lunar New Year because the dates of celebration follow the phases of the moon. Since the mid-1990s people in China have been given seven consecutive […]
On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law, designating the third Monday in January a federal holiday in observance of civil rights leader Dr. […]
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