Happy Festivus!

Many Christmases ago, Frank Costanza went to buy a doll for his son, George. He went to reach for it because it was the last one, but so did another man and as Frank rained blows upon him, he thought there could be another way. The doll was destroyed, but out of that, a new holiday was born. It was called Festivus ...

Festivus is a fictional holiday created by Frank Costanza (played by Jerry Stiller) on the American television comedy Seinfeld. Some fans of the show now celebrate this fictional holiday in real life.

Festivus is a holiday held on December 23 of each year. It was created as a response to the commercialism of the other December holidays. Its motto is 'Festivus, a holiday for the rest of us'.



Categories: christmas, humor, humour, calendar-customs, video

Robyn Archer on composers in Australia

Regardless of one's interest in this subject, this audio is an example of a brilliant lecture, in my opinion. Archer completely drew me in to her subject. I enjoyed it, learned a lot, and was stimulated intellectually.

Categories: music, australia, abc, radio-national

Happy Yule

Yule is one of the eight solar holidays, or sabbats, of Neopaganism. Of course, it is a far older tradition than that, as it was the Winter Solstice celebration of Scandinavian Norse mythology and Germanic pagans. It is celebrated on the solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere, circa December 21 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa June 21. The name is of Germanic origin; it is also called Midwinter.

The holiday is, with Beltaine and Samhain, one of the most popular among Neopagans. In some traditions, it commemorates the death of the Holly King (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the Oak King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow). In other traditions, it is seen as the birthday of the new sun god.

A traditional ritual is a vigil from dusk to dawn, the longest night of the year, to make sure that the sun will rise again.

Yule is a revival of a Germanic festival that was Christianized as Christmas; indeed, many traditional trappings of Christmas, such as the Yule Log, holly, and the Christmas tree are derived from pre-Christian Yule celebrations ...

Categories: pagan, neopagan, christmas, calendar-customs

Mumping Day, England

Old St Thomas's Day is called 'Mumping Day' in some parts of Britain, because on this day the poor used to go about begging, [Mump, to cheat or to sponge on others; probably from Dutch mompen, to cheat] or, as it was called, 'a-gooding', that is, getting gifts to procure good things for Christmas, or begging corn.

In Lincolnshire, the name used to be applied to Boxing Day; in Warwickshire, the term was 'going a-corning'. People would also be said to be going 'Thomasing' on this day.

Women going 'a-gooding' presented their donors with sprigs of palm and branches of primroses. It still was kept up in folklorist William Hone's time (1826) in the area of Maidstone, Kent ...

Categories: uk, calendar-customs, saint

Innocent man free after 35 years in prison

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for a kidnapping and rape that he didn't commit. DNA testing proved it, and he's been released, displaying remarkable forgiveness to the system and people who fucked him over. It's another nail in the coffin for capital punishment. Just imagine if Mr Bain had been executed, as many are despite their innocence - which is one thing the Innocence Project is waking people up to. State murder is still murder, often undeserved, and always too barbaric for good people to condone.

Categories: capital-punishment, crime, law, legal, death-penalty, usa

Presidential pardon for US free love advocate

1878 Ezra Heywood (1829 - 189?), North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist, imprisoned for 'obscenity' in the previous June for his advocacy of 'free love', was pardoned by US President Rutherford Hayes after popular agitation for his release.

After the Civil War, the abolitionist Heywood had turned his attention towards the labor movement and, eventually, towards free love.

The Heywoods' The Word, subtitled A Monthly Journal of Reform, was connected to radical individualism both through its editors and through its contributors, who included Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and JK Ingalls ...

Categories: history, biography, radical-history

Heat Over a Leaked UN Warming Analysis

By ANDREW C. REVKIN--A document leaked during climate negotiations reveals lots of heat ahead.

COPENHAGEN — Late today, environmentalists monitoring the climate talks alerted reporters to the existence of a six-page document, dated December 15th, that is a compilation by the United Nations office managing the talks of all the major countries’ plans for curbing their emissions, along with a calculation of where that would take the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and eventual temperature of the planet. United Nations officials confirmed the document’s authenticity but declined to discuss it.

The analysis concluded that without much stronger action to cut emissions both before and after 2020, “global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 p.p.m. [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air] with the related temperature” rising 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is far above the thresholds for dangerous warming being debated at the meeting and accepted in recent statements by the major economies of the world.

The conclusion that current plans for greenhouse gases would lead to substantial warming is not new and largely based on recent analysis by Sir Nicholas Stern, a British economist, and in step with findings of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere.

But environmental campaigners said they were outraged that the document so clearly showed that countries involved in the negotiations are aware of the gap ...
Source

Categories: un, climate-change, global-warming, disinfo, disinformation

The Saturnalia of ancient Rome

Four major Roman festivals were held in December, including the Saturnalia, which celebrated the returning Sun-god. Saturnalia (from the god Saturn) was the name the Romans gave to their holiday marking the Winter Solstice, and many of our Christmas customs derive from it. Saturn was a Roman cognate of the Greek god Chronos (Time). He devoured all his children except Jupiter (air), Neptune (water), and Pluto (the underworld, or grave). These time cannot consume. Like the Grim Reaper, he carries a sickle, and we know him in our day as Father Time.

The reign of Saturn was celebrated by the poets as a 'golden age'. According to the old alchemists and astrologers Saturn typified lead, and was a very evil planet to be born under. He was the god of seedtime and harvest and his symbol was a scythe, and he was finally banished from his throne by his son, Jupiter.

Saturnalia was celebrated for seven days beginning on December 17. It honoured the corn-god Saturn and his consort, Ops, the goddess of plenty. Normal activities were suspended during this time period. Slaves and masters were temporarily on an equal footing, and the theme was goodwill to all ...

Categories: ancient-rome, festival, deity, calendar-customs, christmas

School of the Americas rebadged for comfort

2000 The School of the Americas (SOA), in Fort Benning, Georgia, a USA army facility that critics have labelled a school for dictators, torturers and assassins, closed under that name, to reopen on January 17, 2001 as the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'.

It is widely believed that much of the torture and humiliation of prisoners as documented in America's crusades in Afghanistan and the Middle East, came from techniques taught in School of the Americas (first tried out in Latin America) ...

Categories: usa, torture