Debrah Wright
Ms.Aguilar
Pre-AP English II-1
14 May 2014
Holidays: Holy Days or Horror Days
Shining lights, tasty treats, family coming in and pinching children's cheeks, the joy of gifts and the thrill of giving -- all these things are what can be expected during the holiday seasons. Grandma is cooking in the kitchen as you are sitting on the floor and staring inquisitively at the mesmerizing tree. Only one thing, though, is truly on your young mind, the multicolored themed wrapped up boxes beneath its dark pine branches. You think back to the other holidays where you received prizes and were allowed freedom. Like that one Halloween the first time you went as a makeshift sheet ghost. Appreciating the cool autumn air as it lead you into the night then greeting every welcoming person with a candy bowl with "trick or treat"! Possibly even reliving that one fateful February day where your first crush snuck you a chocolate kiss and a bright red card entailing the cliché poem involving violets and roses. You never question the origin of these days and yet you still reveled in the fun. Holidays show the truth behind what humans may think as sacred, traditional and what is important to their natural culture and life styles. Holidays also give people the opportunity to "blow off steam" and have something to look forward to in the simplistic patterns of living in a routine daily life. Holidays are shown as major rites and customary influences of ritualistic comfort throughout having annual celebrations. However, beneath the veneer of fun and celebrations these holidays , Valentines Day, Halloween, and Christmas, lies a sinister history that needs explored.
Today, February fourteenth represents a day of love, adoration, and true commitmen...
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...excuse for materialism. Companies use holidays as a get rich quick operations, manipulating the ideas of giving. "Today, the holiday [Valentines] is big business: According to market research firm IBIS World, Valentine's Day sales reached $17.6 billion last year; this year's sales are expected to total $18.6 billion" ( Siepel). Every year holidays seem to get more important to our economy and our own pockets and people forget to ask the questions of true importance. The questions that will lead to the truth. Behind every holiday there is a reason and a long past of stories and fictitious tales, and looking at them in the lime light shows the true nature of humans. The choice to accept the dark past and continue with the jolly festivals must be made. Knowing the truth of these holidays has lead to an insight on the past and can influence todays choices.
In digging the day of the dead a distinction between Dia de los Muertos and Halloween is made, the purpose, to highlight the differences and showing the importance and significance of Dia de los Muertos. This ethnography begins by loosely describing Halloween in American culture, it is described as a day where “children dress up as grotesque corpses” and a celebration empty of historic or cultural significance and knowledge. The author Juanita Garciagodoy, later goes on to describe Dia de los Muertos in a romanticized way, by statin that the dead “are not forgotten or excluded from recollections, prayer, or holidays because they are no longer visible” Garciagodoy then goes on to tell a heartfelt story about a couple one holding on to tradition,
The story opens with the haunting anthem of “This is Halloween” as Halloween Town serenades an opening procession led by no other than Jack Skellington, the leader of Halloween Town. After the celebration is done, we see Jack wandering woefully by himself and reveals that he has grown weary of the holiday, he yearns for something new and exciting. He finds this when he accidentally stumbles into the world of Christmas. I believe this struggle of growing tired of things and yearning for something new is a feeling we all experience and helps us relate to Jack. The love story between Sally and Jack in the film gives reinvigorating and playful twist on the theme of ‘forbidden love’.
Henderson, Helene, and Sue Ellen Thompson. Holiday Symbols and Customs: A Guide to the Legend and Lore behind the Traditions, Rituals, Foods, Games, Animals, and Other Symbols and Activities Associated with Holidays and Holy Days, Feasts and Fasts, and Other Celebrations, Covering Ancient, Calendar, Religious, Historic, Folkloric, National, Promotional, and Sporting Events, as Observed in the United States and around the World. Detroit MI: Omnigraphics, 2009. Print.
What about other countries though? Is the Christmas season all about giving and receiving gifts? Are children in Spain rewarded by Santa with gifts and toys on Christmas Eve? In this essay we will look at what Christmas season means in Spain, and what traditions are prevalent in their culture. We will also look at the Christmas related traditions of Americans, and how those compare and contrast to those in Spain.
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
Of all religious holidays that have been adopted by secularists, one of the most popular would be Christmas, originally meant to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. With the exact date of Jesus' birth unknown during ancient times, Christmas was initially assigned to January 6th, but was changed to December 25th under the influence of the winter solstice (Nothaft 903). Peculiarly however, is the universal celebration of Christmas al...
However, for example, each culture celebrates different holidays differently due to cultural or religious views. Furthermore, each culture around the world celebrates Christmas in different and various ways. Such as the food at the dinner table, the tale of ‘Santa’, the presents may also vary as well, and even the way everything is done is also done in different ways globally during Christmas. Even New Years can be another example of how other cultures interrupt and celebrate a certain holiday. The way people of different cultures view this article, not understanding what anything means.
With the end of October and the beginning of November, two historically celebrated holidays come to pass. Each holiday has been celebrated for centuries, and each one continues to have a large impact on society. Interestingly, they developed in two separate civilizations from different hemispheres and occur around the same time. The two distinct holidays of Halloween and Day of the Dead both share similar origins and a focus on spiritual aspects and yet have still remained unique celebrations that continue to largely impact culture.
Everybody celebrates Halloween, but some people might celebrate the spooky holiday in a variety of ways. Most people celebrate this holiday by going door to door asking the greeters for candy while in their costumes. Others may see the night as an advantage to play pranks on others or even to create public haunted houses or haunted trails. For people that like to hold public events, they may create costume parties. For those that are either lazy or they just don’t want to participate in the events, they may spend the night by staying in their houses and doing an activity of their own. Most do not know this, but Halloween was originally a holiday to honor loved ones who passed.
People dream of the months of pumpkin spice, fall leaves, and scary decorations. When that's all over, they move on to putting their decorations on a tree, hanging twinkly lights, and drinking eggnog. The months of October through December cause people to become enlivened at the thought of what they will do to celebrate the holidays that are in them. Halloween and Christmas are two holidays in the last few months of the year that so many people look forward to. Halloween is the fear-based holiday involving frightful decor, receiving candy from strangers, and dressing in costume while throwing a party. Christmas is celebrated by filling houses with all things red and green, gifting presents topped with bows, having a family dinner, and throwing
For me personally while holiday shopping, there are always the crazy lines and crowds of people that you have to brave through to get exactly what you came in for. Well with Valentine’s Day as the holiday of this month it always seemed to sneak up on me, especially after having Christmas shopping and then the New Years holiday right after I always seem to forget that this holiday is so close by. As
Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.
The fall and winter months bring more than a change in weather. There is a change to rhythm of the days with sorter daylight hours as we move into the darker days of winter. Harvest comes to an end and the fields once green and lush now lie fallow, resting from a vigorous growing season. Yet this time of year is filled with excitement as Thanksgiving and Christmas will soon be here. However, this is only two festival times in the church year.
The Catholic holiday Day of The Dead and the westernized holiday of Halloween are two very different holidays celebrated for completely different reasons. The only real similarities between them is the closeness of their date of celebration and their use of the object of death. Other than these two things the holidays are very different from each other.
Christmastime was always a magical time of year for me. The beautifully decorated shopping malls, with toys everywhere you looked, always fascinated me. And the houses, with the way their lights would glow upon the glistening snow at night, always seemed to calm me. But decorating the Christmas tree and falling asleep underneath the warm glow of the lights, in awe that Santa Claus would soon be there, was the best part of it all. As a child, these things enchanted me. Sure, the presents were great, but the excitement and mystery of Christmas; I loved most of all. Believing…that’s what it was all about. Believing there really was a Santa and waking up Christmas morning, realizing he’d come, as my sleepy eyes focused on all the fancily wrapped presents before me.