“In no other country in any part of the world is the Chrysanthemum held with such esteem and reverence as in Japan…
“…the most popular fête in Japan is held on Chrysanthemum Day, which falls in the ninth month of the year. The people on that day throw petals of the flower into their “saki” before drinking, as they believe it portends good luck and happiness and has the power of dispelling evil.
“Not until the year 1789 was the first advent of the Chrysanthemum into Europe from the Far East authentically recorded. In that year a M. Blancard introduced three plants to his native town, Marseilles. These were regarded at the time as large-flowering Chamomiles, not Chrysanthemums.”
Today is the equivalent of China’s Double Ninth Festival, held on the 9th day of the 9th lunar month. In Japan, Chrysanthemum Day follows the Gregorian calendar, falling on September 9th. Also known as Kiko no Sekku, it is one of Japan’s sacred festivals, or matsuri.
In 2009, Japan had a rare chance to celebrate Triple Ninth—the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century. 9-9-9 won’t happen again until 2109!
On September 8, the Catholic world celebrates the birth of the Virgin Mary.
Little is know of Mary’s birth from the Bible. The Gospel of James (which didn’t make the final cut) list her folks as Joachim and Anne (Hannah). The couple was childless until they were visited by an angel who informed them a child was forthcoming. Anne promised the child would be brought up to serve the Lord.
Mary would have been born “Mariam” or מרים
For two-thousand years, the Virgin Mary has been the symbol of feminine spirituality in Christian culture. While Eve was unfairly vilified as the bringer of original sin throughout the Middle Ages, Mary represented the opposite, the ultimate purity and the the bringer of God.
Pope John Paul ll in his 2000 millennium message elevates the status of both Eve and Mary. He describes Eve as the original symbol of Humanity, the mother who gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, as a symbol of the New Humanity; one in which All Humanity is One in Spirit with God. This statement changes the context which the Christian doctrine has relegated to women; that the Spirit of God resides equally in male and female.
Visions of the Virgin Mary have been spotted by worshippers throughout the Christian world. One of the most famous of these was witnessed initially by three children in Fatima, Portugal in 1917.
On the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, many Mediterranean and Latin-American villages carry her statue from local churches through the streets. Local Spanish processions are known as Virgin de la Pena, Virgin de la Fuesanta, and Virgin de la Cinta. Peru has the Virgin of Cocharcas, and in Bolivia it’s the Virgin of Guadalupe.
And it may not be Madonna (Madonna Louise “Like A Virgin” Ciccone)’s birthday, but singer-songwriter Aimee Mann turns 51 today…and rumor has it she’s still a Virginian.
Had the Pope’s arm slipped just an inch that day in 1494, the people of Brazil might be speaking Spanish right now. But the vertical line in the Treaty of Tordesillas that split the world outside Europe between Spain and Portugal held steady. The Pope alloted the easternmost chip of the Americas to Portugal, while Spain got the rest.
The history of Brazil would unfurl quite differently from the rest of its neighbors, and indeed from all of the Americas.
As Portuguese explorers pushed eastward that chip of South America soon became the largest colony on the continent. A land that contained vast jungles, endless rivers, and bountiful resources unimaginable to the Europeans back home in Portugal.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon of France invaded Portugal.
The King of Portugal, João VI, fled to Brazil and declared Rio de Janeiro the new capital of Portugal and its possessions. (Imagine King George III coming to America and declaring New York the capital of Great Britain.)
Napoleon then did an about face and turned his troops on Spain. (This wasn’t hard to do, since the French army was already in Spain. Spain had given Napoleon permission to cross through to attack Portugal.)
As a result, South America was a scene of pandemonium for the next two decades. The Spanish colonies refused to answer to the French and declared their autonomy one at a time. Even when Spain kicked the French out of their homeland, the people of South America maintained their independence, leading to several lengthy wars between Spain and its colonies. From Buenos Aires to Santiago to Lima and beyond, the wars were hard fought and costly, both in terms of resources and human lives.
Rio de Janeiro
The situation in Brazil was different. João VI fell in love with Brazil, and when the French were booted out of Portugal in 1815, he refused to come home. João made Brazil its own kingdom, an equal partner with Portugal. But the folks back home were not so thrilled about this. They demanded that the royal family return to Portugal and that Brazil be made a colony again.
Eventually the king was forced to return home to maintain order in Portugal; his 23 year-old son Pedro stayed behind and became regent of the Kingdom of Brazil.
Pedro defied orders to return to Lisbon. The Portuguese Parliament limited his powers, and attempted to make Brazil a subservient colony once again. Upon hearing this news at the bank of the Ipiranga River, Pedro famously declared: “Independência ou Morte!” (Independence or Death!) The Grito do Ipiranga (Shout of Ipiranga) took place on September 7, 1822.
Grito de Iparanga
Pedro was proclaimed Emperor of Brazil on October 12, his 24th birthday.
In 1831, Pedro abdicated the throne to his 5 year-old son, Pedro II and returned to Portugal. Pedro II ruled as Emperor for nearly 50 years. In 1889 the Emperorship was abolished and Brazil became a republic.
Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia declared their unification on September 6, 1885. Unfortunately, no one outside of Bulgaria—neither the Western Powers nor the Ottoman Empire, of which Rumelia had been a part—recognized the union.
The declaration precipitated the Serbo-Bulgarian War in which Bulgaria defended its borders, and Bulgarians still celebrate September 6 as the anniversary of its unification.
This year (2009) most events celebrating Unification Day have been canceled, due to a tragic boating accident on Saturday which killed 15 Bulgarians. The boat Ilinden sank in Lake Ohrid, Macedonia. An investigation as the cause of the sinking is currently underway.
Instead, the President has declared Monday, September 7 a National Day of Mourning.
Memorial services for the victims were held at Plovdiv Cathedral, and were attended by the President and Speaker of Parliament.
During the mass, the Plovdiv Metropolitan, Nikolay, hinted that God had punished Bulgarians over their many sins including celebrating and partying too much on August 29 (the day of the concert of pop diva Madonna in Sofia) instead of mourning for St. John the Baptist.
I have to say the name’s misleading. The whole point is not to labor on Labor Day, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be Leisure Day or Play Day? But then I guess it would defeat the purpose of honoring the workers–past and present–who make it possible to BBQ on this day.
Scores of countries and billions of people celebrate Labor Day on May Day (May 1) but the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand just had to be different.
By the 1880s May 1 had become a traditional day for workers to unite and go on strike, strikes which led to progressive social measures, but also violence between workers and police. The most notable example being the Haymarket Riot of 1886.
The Anarchist Riot in Chicago, Harper's Bizarre, May 15, 1886
Pressure was on for the creation of a Federal Holiday honoring the workers of America. President Grover Cleveland wanted to appease workers’ organizations by creating an official Labor Day, but the political establishment was afraid a May 1 holiday would strengthen socialist solidarity and forever bring attention to violent May Day clashes like Haymarket, leading to much such demonstrations in the future.
In 1886 Cleveland instituted a national Labor Day, but moved it to the first Monday in September. (The Central Labor Union of New York had been celebrating an autumnal Labor event since 1882.)
It worked. Today few Americans recall the Haymarket riots, but we use Labor Day to bid farewell to the glorious days of summer. Labor Day means back-to-school for kids, don’t wear white for the fashion conscious (although this too is fading), and time to host that last big barbecue before bequeathing the grill back to the spiders.
All across India hundreds of millions of schoolchildren celebrate Teachers’ Day. In many schools, children dress up like their teachers. Teachers meanwhile, sit in the back of the room, like students, as the students lead class, and roles are reversed for a day. Students have a chance to see from their mentors’ eyes, and teachers remember what is was like to be a student, to have the one other job as important as teaching: learning.
The lesson plan may include a look at the man behind Teachers Day, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
Born on this day in 1888 in Tamil Nadu, India, Radhakrishnan became one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century. According to George Conger:
“…Among the philosophers of our time, no one has achieved so much in so many fields as has Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan of India … William James was influential in religion, and John Dewey has been a force in politics. One or two American philosophers have been legislators. Jacques Maritain has been an ambassador. Radhakrishnan, in a little more than thirty years of work, has done all these things and more… Never in the history of philosophy has there been quite such a world-figure…. like a weaver’s shuttle, he has gone to and fro between the East and West, carrying a thread of understanding, weaving it into the fabric of civilization.”
Radhakrishnan taught subjects including philosophy, ethics and comparative religion at the Universities of Calcutta, Oxford, and Ahndra.
In 1952 he was elected the first Vice-President of India. Ten years later the philosopher became India’s second President.
When his friends and former students wished to make his birthday a holiday, Radhakrishnan did not forget his first calling. He replied, “Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if 5 September is observed as Teachers’ Day.”
Throughout the rest of his life, Radhakrishnan went on learning and teaching, holding true to his most firmly held belief:
“The true seekers are those who never end their quest. Even at the termination of one’s life one is still searching. Fulfillment is a distant goal.”
Every year on September 4 (or the weekend closest to) approximately 200 Angelinos, known as the Pobladores recreate a nine-mile walk from San Gabriel to downtown Los Angeles, California, originally taken on this day in 1781. The Pobladores are descendants of the original permanent settlers of Los Angeles, eleven families and four Spanish soldiers who journeyed from Northern Mexico to what is now Los Angeles.
The final leg of the journey ran from the San Gabriel Mission to near what is now Olvera Street.
Actually the original settlement was right on the banks of the Los Angeles River, then called the Rio de Nuestra Senora, Santa Maria, Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula. (Our Lady Santa Maria, Queen of the Angels of Porcuicula River.) It had been so named on July 31, 1769 by a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portola.
Porciuncula means “small portion of land” but it also has a spiritual connotation. The most famous ‘porziuncula’ was the small portion of land, and the tiny chapel upon it, bequeathed to St. Francis of Asissi in the 13th century. It was from this church that the Franciscan Order spread. ‘Porciuncula’ was often used to refer to a special place of retreat.
The natives gave the settlers funny looks in 1781, for building their pueblo right on the river, and come the rainy season the settlers found out why. Their little settlement was flooded out, and they rebuilt the Pueblo further away from the river, where it still stands today.
Fortunately for posterity, the name “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reyna de los Angeles” has been shortened to just Los Angeles. And for those for whom that’s too much a mouthful, it’s simply L.A.
Routes of the Pobladores
The Pobladores were a mixed-race group, with over half claiming black and Native American blood. Each year, Angelinos watch and join the descendants of the Pobladores as they retrace the steps of the ancestors on the nine-mile walk.
The 44-person pueblo has grown into a city of 4 million, with over 12 million in the metropolitan area. L.A. is the only city outside Europe to have hosted the Olympics twice. L.A. has four major airports, one of which is the 5th busiest in the world. In the late 19th century, Los Angeles was a fairly sleepy city. Settlers began arriving from all parts of the country, attracted first by the region’s agricultural advantages, and in the 20th century by its aviation and film industries. All of these benefited from Southern California’s famous year-round sunshine.
The city in the desert survives largely because of water imported from the Owens Valley. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the largest municipal utility in the U.S.
The Los Angeles neighborhood known as Hollywood (there is a movement to make it its own city) is largely responsible spreading Southern California culture across the world.
The Los Angeles (Porciuncula) River, not quite as scenic as it once was
Some sources cite the tiny nation of San Marino as the oldest country in the world. According to tradition, San Marino declared itself a constitutional republic in 301 AD. Founded by a Christian stonemason (Marinus of Rab) fleeing persecution, San Marino declared itself a constitutional republic in 301 AD.
San Marino lies entirely within Italy.
The secret to San Marino’s longevity? It takes soothing milk baths and does not engage in Middle-East land wars. It also helped that during the tumultuous Italian unification period in the 19th century, San Marino granted asylum to commander Giuseppe Garibaldi and 4000 of his men retreating from French forces in 1849. Later Garibaldi, as leader of a newly unified Italy, returned the favor by granting San Marino’s wish to remain independent.
The country’s official name is the “Most Serene Republic of San Marino”. [Makes one wonder if there are other, less serene republics of San Marino?] At 24 square miles, it’s the fourth smallest nation in the world (About 1/10th the size of Charlotte, North Carolina). And with only 30,000 residents, it’s got a smaller population than many universities.
Guaita Tower, San Marino
But what San Marino lacks is size, it more than makes up for in tourists. 3.5 million people visit the ancient locale each year, enjoying its breathtaking views of the Adriatic (San Marino itself is landlocked) and its scenic medieval mountaintop fortifications. Its location high atop Mount Titano is one of the reasons it was only overrun twice in its recorded history, briefly in 1503 and again in 1739, though the neutral country was bombed once by the Allies during World War II, believing the Germans had taken it.
San Marino is also one of the oldest countries in the world in another respect…its average life expectancy is 81 years.
Today, September 3, is celebrated as the Feast Day of its patron and founder, St. Marinus of Rab.
