April – Page 4 – every day's a holiday!

April 7, 2011April 8, 2011

Toussaint L’Ouverture Day

April 7

He stood the aged palms beneath,
that shadowed o’er his humble door,
Listening, with half-suspended breath,
To the wild sounds of fear and death,
Toussaint L’Ouverture!

— Toussaint L’Ouverture, by John Greeleaf Whittier

Toussaint L’Ouverture was born a slave in French Saint Domingue, now Haiti, in 1743. Many legends are told of his early life. He was nicknamed “Walking Stick” due to his narrow stature, and was later described as more charismatic than attractive.

At the age of 33 he was given his freedom. He married and by all accounts he had settled into a quiet life by 1791. By that time word of the French Revolution and its ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity had reached Saint Domingue, and the slaves and free men of color hoped the promises of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” would extend to them. When it became apparent no such action was forthcoming, the slaves revolted in the Boukman Rebellion of of 1791. Slavery was banned in 1793.

During the 1790’s the three great European powers, France, Britain, and Spain, were all vying for control of the colony. Toussaint joined the army, first working as a doctor; within a few years, now in his early 50’s, he underwent an unbelievable professional trajectory. Toussaint went from being an ordinary Haitian living in peace to an unparalleled military genius and the governor of Saint Domingue. A former black slave who would defeat the armies of the greatest European empires.

Toussaint became governor of Saint Domingue in 1797. Professing allegiance to France, he chased the last Spanish forces off Santo Domingo in 1801.

Toussaint next sought to make Saint Domingue an independent, permanently slave-free nation. Napoleon, seeking to reintroduce slavery to the island, sent 20,000 troops to the island to retake and depose of Toussaint.

“At the head of all is the most active and indefatigable man one can imagine. One can definitely say that he is everwhere and above all in the place where sound judgement and danger lead him to believe that his presence is the most essential. His great sobriety and the ability given only to him of never resting, the advantage he has of going back to office work after a tiresome journey, of replying to a hundred letters a day and of habitually exhausting five secretaries.”

— Colonel Vincent, in a note to Bonaparte. The Gilded African, Wendy Parkinson

Though initially told he could return to civilian life, Toussaint was betrayed and kidnapped by French forces, and was taken to a remote fort in the high French Alps. Unused to the freezing temperatures and kept under the harshest conditions, Toussaint died in French captivity on this day (April 7) 1803.

The U.S.’s second President (1796-1800), John Adams, voice of the American Revolution two decades earlier, had supported the L’Ouverture revolution against European colonialism.

Adam’s successor Thomas Jefferson felt otherwise:

“I become daily more & more convinced that all the West India Islands will remain in the hands of the people of color; & a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. It is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly and possibly ourselves (south of the Potomac) have to wade through to try to avert them.” — Letter to James Monroe, July 1793

When Haiti gained won its freedom in 1804 under the command of one of Toussaint’s generals, Jefferson, a strong ally of the French, refused to acknowledge Haiti’s independence. The island nation would have to wait until 1862 when Abraham Lincoln’s administration finally recognized it. Ironically, the Jefferson administration owed a great deal to L’Ouverture. It was L’Ouverture’s defection and uprising in Haiti that forced Napoleon to sell their continental North American possessions—the Louisiana Territory—to Jefferson for a song.

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men…
O Miserable Chieftan! Where and when
Wilt thou find Patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
…There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultation, agonies
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

— William Wordsworth

“His political performance was such that, in a wider sphere, Napoleon appears to have imitated him.”

— Citizen Toussaint, Ralph Korngold

April 6, 2011March 31, 2011

Chakri Day – Thailand

April 6

In Thailand, you don’t mess with the King. Not even to be funny.

In 2002 a Philadelphia restaurant/bar called St. Jack’s used a likeness of the King to promote an dance night event. They gave him a buzz cut with bleached Vanilla Ice lines, and plenty of bling bling. Word of the ad made news in Thailand, and the government threatened to cut off ties with the U.S. unless the ad was removed.

The Thai monarchy goes back to the 13th century, and the present line descends from King Rama I (1736-1809).

That’s who Thailand celebrates today, on Chakri Day.

In his youth, Tong-Duang, the future King Rama I, was a royal page under King Uthumporn. At the Royal Palace he met fellow page Taksin.

“According to legend, when [Taksin] and his friend Tong-Duang were priests they met a Chinese fortune-teller who told them that they both had lucky lines in the palms of their hands and would both become kings.” — spiritus-temporis.com

Taksin indeed went on to become a remarkably successful military leader, and later King, who turned the tide in the war against the Burmese.

The reigns of the kings preceding Rama, including Taksin, were dominated by ongoing struggles with the Burmese.

Rama was general to King Taksin, who was a popular king, but whose success went to his head. According to legend, he became a megalomaniac, declared himself an incarnation of Buddha and executed nobles for refusing to agree. He was deposed on April 6, 1782 and Rama, his leading general, became King, thus fulfilling the fortune-teller’s prediction.

Rama is remembered for many innovations, chief among them, moving the capital of Siam to Bangkok, where it has remained for over two centuries. The Rama line descends directly from him.

The present king of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej is Rama IX. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1927, he was not originally in line for the throne. In 1932 an insurrection reduced the powers of the king, and enforced parliamentary procedure. The king at the time was forced to abdicate in favor of his nephew.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascended to the throne in 1946. He is the longest (currently) reigning head of state in the world.

This just in: More Than 100,000 Thais Rally Against King’s Advisor – April 8, 2009

April 5, 2011March 31, 2011

Qing Ming Festival

April 5, 2010
April 5, 2011
April 4, 2012

Two weeks after the spring equinox (usually April 5) the Chinese spend this day with their beloved departed. Qing Ming, or Tomb Sweeping Day is one of the few Chinese holidays to follow the solar calendar rather than the lunar.

On this day families travel together to the grave’s of their loved ones to honor their memory. It’s believed that the spirits of family members who have passed on continue to watch over the family.

The holiday has been celebrated for over 2,500 years, originating with a Chinese Emperor who honored the memory of a royal official who sacrificed his life to save the Emperor.

Today relatives try to ensure their ancestors’ happiness in many different ways. Some sweep away the underbrush and dirt that has accumulated, and decorate their graves with flowers. Others cook the favorite dish of the departed. It’s traditional to burn ‘fake’ money or paper models of other goods, but this year Chinese officials are concerned about dry conditions conducive to fires, and are encouraging other methods of honoring the dead, such as planting trees.

The cemeteries are swamped with visitors this day. Officials estimate 100,000 people will visit the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing today.

Meanwhile a new tradition is developing online where relatives can light virtual candles and carry on the traditions of Qing Ming in cyberspace.

The 2008 Tomb Sweeping Day is an historic event in that it has been declared a national public holiday for the first time.

April 3, 2011April 8, 2011

Tweed Day

April 3

Tweed is so awesome,
Woolen clothing from Scotland
That’s fashionable.

— Tweed Haiku, blahblahblahger

Today we sing the virtues of that most durable fabric, tweed.

Wait, no, wrong tweed.

Tweed Day remembers the corrupt politician who held New York City in the palm of his hand in the mid-1800s.

William Magear Tweed was “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that essentially ran New York. Tweed was born on this day (April 3) in 1823. The son of a Scottish-American chair-maker on the Lower East Side, he began his political career by organizing volunteer fire departments. He and Tammany Hall earned the support of New York’s working-class Irish immigrants, granting citizenship to potential constituents at the rate of 2,000 voters a day. (It Happened on Washington Square, Emily Kies Folpe)

He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at the tender age of 29, to the New York State Senate in 1867, and in 1868 was made “grand sachem” (Big Poobah) of Tammany Hall.

It’s estimated that Tweed stole—I mean “misappropriated” between $40 and$200 million dollars from the public during his tenure, which back in the 1860s was considered a lot of money. (We’re talking 1860’s dollars here, so billions by today’s standards.)

Boss Tweed’s downfall is often attributed to the satirical political cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly starting in 1868. Legend has it, Tweed said of the cartoons, “Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures.”

Boss Tweed cartoon

But in truth Tweed was still at the height of his power in late 1870 when an investigation by “six businessmen with unimpeachable reputations” found that Tweed’s books had been “faithfully kept” and could find no wrong-doing. Tweed was expected to run for and win the New York U.S. Senate seat in 1872.

Tweed’s real downfall wasn’t the papers. It was a holiday: the Glorious Twelfth. No, not Grouse-hunting day, the other Glorious Twelfth. July 12th is a Northern Irish Protestant holiday celebrating King William of Orange’s victory over the largely Irish Catholic forces of King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

In July 1871, Irish Protestants in New York City (the Loyal Order of Orange) sought permission to throw an Orange Parade.

“Irish Catholic organizations protested that the parade would be an insult to their community and pointed to the Orangemen’s behavior the previous July 12, when they had marched up Eighth Avenue…”

— Gotham, by Edwin Burrows & Mike Wallace

The marchers the previous year had the ingenious idea of hurling epithets at Irish workers who were laying pipe along the streets they passed, and sang such rousing hits as “Croppies, Lie Down.” Eight people were killed in the violence that ensued.

Tweed nixed the 1871 parade, and the Protestants, fearing that Irish Catholics had taken over their city, laid into Tweed. Public tide rapidly turned against him until Tweed and the Governor were forced to reverse the decision and allowed the parade to take place.

In the infamous “Orange Riots of July 12th” that started as a parade, between thirty and sixty people were killed, including two police officers. Over a hundred citizens were wounded, and twenty policemen.

After the riot, both sides were fed up with the Boss. And someone upset at Tweed for the whole parade debacle supplied the Times with the incriminating evidence they needed to convict him in the court of public approval.

“On July 22, ten days after the Boyne Day battle, the Times began publishing solid evidence of Ring rascality, turned over to the paper by an aggrieved insider. Day after Day, publisher George Jones reproduced whole pages from the cooked account books of James Watson, who until his recent death in a sleighing accident up in Harlem Lane had been the Ring’s trusted bookkeeper.” (Gotham)

The investigation revealed a plague of graft and corruption unprecedented in American politics.

In one example, New York City paid more for a single courthouse under Tweed than Secretary of State Seward had just paid for the territory of Alaska.

In fact the courthouse cost twice as much as Alaska, and four times as much as Britain’s Houses of Parliament. [Now that’s fiscal stimulus!]

When news of New York City’s debt spread overseas, European officials cut off the city’s line of credit and removed NYC bonds from the Berlin Stock Exchange.

The rest of the Tweed timeline goes like this:

October 1871: Tweed arrested
November 1871: Tweed wins re-election
December 1871: Tweed booted out as “grand sachem” of Tammany Hall
January 1873: First trial results in hung jury, possibly bribed
November 1873: Tweed convicted, sentenced to 12 years
1875: Conviction overturned, Tweed is released
1875-1878: Tweed is immediately sued for 6 million by creditors. Unable to repay the debts, he’s re-incarcerated. He escapes to Cuba, but is returned by Spanish authorities.
1878: Boss Tweed, once the third largest property owner in New York City, dies in prison, a broken man. He is 55.

Moral of the story: You can lie, cheat, and steal, but don’t mess with people’s parades. Or their holidays.

Today is Tweed Day.

I’ve no idea who started this holiday, or why we remember a corrupt politician. The earliest references I’ve found are only a few decades old, in Chase’s Calendar of Events. But for the record, everydaysaholiday.org neither condones nor condemns this holiday, and we wholly support the right of the God-loving people of this land to celebrate the durable Scottish fabric we call Tweed.

“If everyone wears a tweed cap on April 3rd, after having endured the proper amount of ridicule from co-workers, you can all meet up in State House Square and re-enact the big dance scene from Newsies in celebration of Tweed.”

— http://www.hartford.com/event-detail.php?id=137

April 2, 2011April 3, 2011

Sizdah Bedar – Nature Day

April 2

It’s time to celebrate the 13th!

April 2 is Sizdah Bedar, the last day of the Norooz celebrations.

Sizdah means 13, and Sizdah Bedar is celebrated on the 13th day of the Persian new year, which begins on the spring equinox, March 20 or 21.

The first twelve days of the New Year are spent visiting the homes of family and friends. Grandparents and older relatives come first. Then other family members. Then families visit with friends during the later days.

All this leads to the last day of the Norooz season, the 13th.

It’s not because 13 is particularly lucky in Iran or anything. In fact, Sizdah Bedar translates roughly to “getting rid of the 13th.” Persians spend the unlucky 13th day mitigating its potential bad influence on the year by creating good luck of their own. They do this with big communal picnics and outings to parks or the Great Outdoors, and by being surrounded by nature in general. For this reason, Sizdah Bedar is also referred to as Picnic Day or Nature Day.

Some telltale signs it’s 13 Bedar and not just a really big picnic:

A lot of red, white, and green
Persian music and dancing
Noodle soup and lettuce in sekanjebin — a homemade syrup with sugar and vinegar
And you might see plates of what looks like grass growing in a patch of soil. This is sabzeh. These sprouts of wheat or lentils, are planted in early March so as to be short blades by the equinox, symbolizing rebirth. Sizdah Bedar is the traditional date to dispose of the sabzeh, which is often done by young a woman, who ties the ends of sprouts together before dropping them in running water. The tradition stems from fertility rites said to bring good luck in finding a mate in the coming year.

Sizdah Bedar is a cultural holiday, not a religious one. But by coincidence, Sizdah Bedar comes one day after Republic Day in Iran. Republic Day marks the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran on April 1, 1979. Yesterday was the 30th anniversary.

April 1, 2011March 31, 2011

April Fool’s Day

April 1

In the west, the first day of this month starts with a funny thing called the First April Fools day. The day might be a day of befooling others with fun and jokes, however, here in the east it brings endless tales of happiness but mostly sad stories, accidents and tragedies out of this nonsensical fools day on first of this month.

— Jatta ayi Vaisakhi

The first of April some do say,
Is set apart for All Fools Day
But why the people call it so,
Nor I nor they themselves do know.

— Poor Robin’s Almanack, 1760

April Fools Day is one of those grand traditions, handed down from generation to generation, where one generation along the line forgot to tell the next precisely WHY we observe it. Which begs the question:

Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows?

— “Old Ben” Kenobi, 1977

No one really knows from where the bizarre April ritual originated. For centuries the English and Scottish on April 1 sent fools on “sleeveless errands”—fruitless or futile tasks. “That like ‘bootless’ cries?” No, the English have no grudge against uncovered limbs. Bootless comes from the same root as ‘booty’—the treasure, not the footware (or the 3am call). A bootless offense was an unforgivable one, for which no amount of monetary payment, or booty, could bring absolution or pardon. A sleeveless errand on the other hand, probably comes from sleave, meaning a thread or something tangled. The classic sleeveless errands were sending fools on the hunt for the “History of Eve’s Mother” or for “pigeon’s milk.”

“My landlady had a falling out with him about a fortnight ago for sending every one of her children upon some sleeveless errand, as she terms it. Her eldest son went to buy a halfpenny worth of incle at a shoemaker’s; the eldest daughter was despatched half a mile to see a monster; and, in short, the whole family of innocent children made April fools.”

— Joseph Addison, The Spectator, April 24, 1711

In Scotland the phrase of the day was “Hunting the Gowk.” Gowk meant cuckoo. The leading Gowk trick in Scotland was to

“get some unsuspecting rustic to take a note to another man who is in the scheme. The envelope is sealed, of course, and inside is the sentence:

“This is the First of Aprile; Hunt the gowk another mile.”

The man to whom the note is addressed says he is not the right person to receive it, and sends the bearer on another mile by the directions inclosed.”

— NY Times, 4/10/1904

The French have been April fooling since at least the 16th century when New Year’s was changed from late March to January. The story goes that people would make fun of those throwbacks who still celebrated in spring, the Old New Year’s. Such fools living in the past were called “April fish.”

19th century writers suggested that April Fool’s Day roughly corresponded with the Hebrew month during which Noah sent the dove on the fruitless mission to find land after the Genesis flood.

But many also noted that April 1 was about the same time as the Indian festival of “Huli” (Holi), during which time similar customs, or at least good old-fashioned merry-making took place. During Holi Hindu social roles are forgotten, and neighbors blast each other with brightly colored powders.

The Persians meanwhile celebrated (and still do) Sizdah Bedar 13 days after the spring equinox. But that’s a story for tomorrow…

April 1, 2011March 23, 2011

April Fools – 222 Years of Pure Comedy

April 1

Today you will tune into your favorite radio station to find it has been bought by a multinational corporation and changed its format to Spanish top 40

The web will inform you that Google has started targeting advertising content by monitoring surfers’ eye movements, brainwaves, and butt temperature

And you will pick up a magazine or newspaper to find that Microsoft has bought God. Or at the very least, merged with Buddha

Yes, today is April Fools’. A holiday we’ve celebrated since childhood though no one really knows why

The April tradition has been around since at least the 16th century

Holidays of a similar nature date back all the way to antiquity, though not specifically to April. During the Saturnalia masters and servants would switch places for a day. During its successor, the Feast of Fools, medieval folk could mock the church for a day without fear of reprisal. (Until the Church banned it in the 1400s.) If you remember The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo was the King of Fools for a day for the celebration

But both holidays traditionally occurred in winter, not April. As for why the date April 1 was chosen to be the day of fools, we may have the French to thank

The story goes that before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, France celebrated New Year’s Day, not on January 1 but beginning March 25. The celebration lasted an entire week, ending on April 1. With the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 the date was changed to January 1—(the Romans moved New Year’s Day to January 1 way back in 153 BC, but I guess sometimes it takes 1735 years for a good idea to catch on.) It’s also been suggested that the date was changed so folks could still party on New Years even when Easter and Holy Week overlapped the March 25-April 1 dates

Just as in Rome when it took 17 centuries to get the word out, sophisticated Parisian hipsters made the switch, like, yesterday, while those less suave country bumpkins were still celebrating at the end of March. Any peon caught celebrating the end of New Year Week on April 1 was called an April fool. Except they weren’t called April Fools. They were called poisson d’Avril, or April fish, because apparently the fish are foolish in France. Hey, try saying that five times frast! Damn!

Anyway, the frou-frou French would frown upon their inferiors, deridingly bestowing upon their foolish friends gifts of raw fish, though fortunately for the French this tradition finally evolved to fake fish, foregoing the foul fragrance of the fresh

Britain, on the other hand, didn’t change its New Year until 1752 when it adopted the Gregorian calendar. Surprisingly, literature suggests that April Fools’ Day was celebrated in Britain centuries before that. Which begs the question, was English April Fools’ Day an import from the French?

Our theory is that April 1 was chosen to be the Day of Fools in Britain precisely because it was the first non-holiday after the New Year (assuming it’s true that New Year’s was celebrated all week long, like it’s still done today in places like Japan.) I base this theory on nothing but the fact that my friend’s preteen son created his own holiday, Opposite Day (a cross between Saturnalia and What’s Wrong With This Picture) and he chose for its date January 1. But since January 1 already had its own holiday they moved it to January 2. It seems a natural day to celebrate absurdity at the beginning of a new year: the kids can’t wait, and the parents can’t wait to get it over. A similar reasoning may have been behind the church’s Feast of Fools on January 1.

Our other theory is that this French Connection story is a yarn spun (and repeated) by desperate April Fools historians, seeking reason behind that which hath no reason. No, we believe April Fools is a retroactive holiday, and that it was homegrown. It had its roots in the newly established United States of America in 1789. Of all the practical jokes that have ever been played, none can top that of April 1, 1789, when the U.S. House of Representatives first convened.

So no matter what outrageous headlines the Harvard Lampoon, your school paper, or K-whatever try to throw at you today, remember, they’re a distant runner-up from the winner and still champion, the U.S. Congress, where they’ve been living up to their birth date for 222 years.