Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Sociology - Culture, Technology, Nations, grade: 5.0, , language: English, abstract: The paper is supposed to provide a truly comprehensive annotated reference work giving information on national festivals and holidays, with descriptive entries covering religious, cultural, ethnic, historical, popular, and sports celebrations from Britain and America, with sections on calendar systems, and tables of state and national public holidays. The range of festivals and secular holidays in the various countries of the world is now vast. In modern times the proliferation of national and local events has also resulted in scores of special group days, and even whimsical and bizarre observances, ranging from very unique celebration of All Saints Day both in Poland and Ireland, to the Rat’s Wedding Day in China. Nevertheless, this thesis focuses on the Anglo-Saxon festivals, traditions and holidays as celebrated in America and Britain. The celebration of special days and seasons, both religious and secular, is universal. From primitive times onward, special rites and festivals marked the religious mysteries of existence – the miracle of birth, life, death, and rebirth in the environment and in individual human experience. Such celebrations fulfilled a deep-seated longing in the human psyche, evoking profound emotions associated with the changing pattern of the year, the expecting of spring, the joys of summer, the harvest, the decline of the year through fall to the rigors of winter, and the promise of a new spring coming. Inevitably such celebrations involved a measurement of time, so that seasonal festivals could take place at appropriate dates in the cycle of the year.

From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus -- the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction -- was a matter of intense concern. Bede's The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar. It is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the doctrine of the millennium. This translation of the full text of The Reckoning of Time includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. It will interest historians of medieval science, theology, and education, Bede scholars and Anglo-Saxonists, liturgists, and Church historians. It will also serve as an accessible introduction to computus itself. Generations of medieval computists nourished their expertise in Bede's orderly presentation; modern scholars in quest of safe passage through this complex terrain can hope for no better guide.

Ten scholars examine English identity, what makes it distinct, and its role in shaping American culture To many, English immigrants contributed nothing substantial to the varied palette of ethnicity in North America. While there is wide recognition of German American, French American, African American, and Native American cultures, discussion of English Americans as a distinct ethnic group is rare. Yet the historians writing in English Ethnicity and Culture in North America show that the English were clearly immigrants too in a strange land, adding their own hues to the American and Canadian characters. In this collection, editor David T. Gleeson and other contributors explore some of the continued links between England, its people, and its culture with North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These essays challenge the established view of the English having no "ethnicity," highlighting the vibrancy of the English and their culture in North America. The selections also challenge the prevailing notion of the English as "invisible immigrants." Recognizing the English as a distinct ethnic group, similar to the Irish, Scots, and Germans, also has implications for understanding American identity by providing a clearer picture of how Americans often have defined themselves in the context of Old World cultural traditions. Several contributors to English Ethnicity and Culture in North America track the English in North America from Episcopal pulpits to cricket fields and dance floors. For example Donald M. MacRaild and Tanja Bueltmann explore the role of St. George societies before and after the American Revolution in asserting a separate English identity across class boundaries. In addition Kathryn Lamontagne looks at English ethnicity in the working-class culture and labor union activities of workers in Fall River, Massachusetts. Ultimately all the work included here challenges the idea of a coherent, comfortable Anglo-cultural mainstream and indicates the fluid and adaptable nature of what it meant and means to be English in North America.

Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism. This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.

“Food and love and loss and resilience . . . are Hawley’s recipe for a slyly entertaining and heartening novel” (Daniel Menaker, author of The Treatment). Abigail is sure the only thing standing between her and happiness is the weight she gained along with her beloved new baby. Until she instantly loses 170 pounds of husband. When Thad declares that “this whole marriage thing” is no longer working (after commenting about how she’s turning into a bit of a pudge), a shell-shocked Abigail takes her infant daughter, Rosie, and moves back to her parents’ house. Thrown for a loop as a suddenly single new mom, she hunts for guidance in her latest weight-loss book, treating its author as her imaginary personal guru. But as Abigail follows the book’s advice, she begins to rediscover her love of cooking. Her diets have pushed her toward fat-free, joy-free foods, and her mother’s kitchen is filled with instant, frozen, and artificially flavored fare. It’s time for Abigail to indulge her own tastes—and write her own recipe for a good life . . . Bitingly funny and wise, with bonus recipes included, this novel is an ode to food and self-discovery for any woman who’s ever walked away from a relationship—or a diet—to find what true satisfaction is all about. “Revenge is sweet. Reinventing yourself . . . is even sweeter.” —Cathy Lamb, author of If You Could See What I See

Their respective ancestral cultures in England and Spain, argue scholars Milo Kearney and Manuel Medrano, had common roots in medieval Europe, and both their conflicts and the shared understandings that may form the basis for their cooperation trace back to those days."--BOOK JACKET.