Today (August 16) the town of Palau de Cedagne in Southwestern France celebrates Xicolatada. At 11 am on this date, residents indulge in a delicious cup of piping hot chocolate.
This 300+ year-old tradition grew out of another festival. According to legend (i.e., Wikipedia):
15 August was once a festival day, and the locals would drink quite a bit, to the point that they felt a bit ill the following morning. To feel better, the village chocolatier would offer them a hot chocolate, which he claimed was an excellent remedy. Over the years, this habit grew into a custom, and eventually a municipal association was formed to remember the tradition and to organise the distribution of hot chocolate every year on 16 August, at precisely 11 in the morning.
At the time, chocolate was imported through Spain from the Latin American colonies. Located on the border of Spain and France in the Pyrenees, Palau de Cedagne was perfectly situated along popular trade routes.
Today the hot chocolate brewing follows an age-old secret recipe, cooked up in cauldrons, by a brotherhood of well-trained “Mestres xicolaters” (maîtres chocolatiers).
Children’s Day in Paraguay has its roots in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), the most devastating war ever fought in South America. It was fought between Paraguay (on one side) and Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay (on the other).
Children’s Day recalls the anniversary of the one of the last battles of the war in 1869, the Battle of Acosta Nu. Having already lost most of his army, Paraguayan dictator Francisco Lopez used younger and younger recruits. The 6,000 strong force in August of that year was largely made out of children. On August 16, the small retreating army was overtaken by a force of 20,000 men from Brazil and Argentina. Within eight hours, over 2000 Paraguayans lay dead.
Paraguayans say the additional tragedy was that the war was already over at that point, but that the Brazilian government refused to stop until Lopez was captured.
The War of the Triple Alliance remains one of the darkest chapters in South American history.
Celebrated on August 15, the Assumption refers to the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her entry into heaven. But ‘Assumption’ might also refer to what we base our knowledge of the event on, which is–well, nothing.
That’s right, there’s actually no mention of Mary’s Assumption in any of the Gospels. But that’s hardly surprising. In the centuries after Jesus’ death, the sites of his last years in Jerusalem were purged of any reference to the religion that he preached, as the city was completely rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in homage to pagan gods.
“After the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 336, the sacred sites began to be restored and the memories of the life of Our Lord began to be celebrated by the people of Jerusalem,” writes Father Clifford Stevens.
One such site was the “Place of Dormition”, said to be the place where Mary “fell asleep” for the last time. The locals celebrated not the Assumption, but the “Memory of Mary”
For a time, the “Memory of Mary” was marked only in Palestine, but then it was extended by the emperor to all the churches of the East. In the seventh century, it began to be celebrated in Rome under the title of the “Falling Asleep” (“Dormitio”) of the Mother of God. Soon the name was changed to the “Assumption of Mary,” since there was more to the feast than her dying. It also proclaimed that she had been taken up, body and soul, into heaven.
According to tradition, Mary was taken up to heaven body and soul, rather than her soul alone–placing her in a select group of people, including the prophets Enoch and Elijah. By the 13th century the story of the Assumption was accepted as fact my much of Christendom. But the Assumption wasn’t deemed official church dogma until Pope Pius XII proclaimed it so in 1950.
The Twentieth Century witnessed over 140 countries gain independence. [35 of them in the years 1960 and 1991 alone]. But few, if any, stirred such emotion, involved so much conflict, changed and disrupted so many lives, inspired so many future leaders, and so fundamentally altered the world we live in, both politically and philosophically, as the independence of India.
A hundred-year struggle against imperialism and colonization came to a climax as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressed his people on the eve of India’s long-awaited independence:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long surpressed, finds utterance.
Nehru's "Tryst with Destiny" speech
India found that, like so many other countries, while freedom and self-determination solved some ills, other problems were exacerbated. The partition of India into two separate, independent nations disrupted millions of lives and led to a bloody conflict that has not healed to this day.
Less than six months after independence, the Pakistani-Indian conflict would take the life of Mohandas Gandhi himself, the Indian former-lawyer who used civil disobedience to combat racial injustice in South Africa and who raised peaceful resistance to a new level to free his own countrymen in India. On January 30, 1948, Gandhi was shot by a Hindu radical, who was angry at Gandhi’s cooperation with Muslim Indians and Pakistanis.
Indian flag rises above Red Fort, Delhi
Despite the death of its greatest leader, the story of Indian independence showed the world that the principles Gandhi preached, concepts of non-violence and the power of peace, were not mere religious dogma, not words spouted by the powerful to keep the powerless meek and compliant, but were weapons capable of ending an Empire.
Swami Vivekananda was once asked by an Englishwoman, “What have you Hindus done? You have never even conquered a single nation.” To which the Swami replied…
That is true from the point of view of the Englishman…but from ours it is quite the opposite. If I ask myself what has been the cause of India’s greatness, I answer, because we have never conquered.
The gift of India is the gift of religion and philosophy, and wisdom and spirituality. And religion does not want cohorts to march before its path and clear its way. Wisdom and philosophy do not want to be carried on floods of blood. Wisdom and philosophy do not march upon bleeding human bodies…but come on the wings of peace and love, and that has always been so.
All right you cucurbitaceans, you’ve waited all year for this!
Today, the second Sunday of August, the country of Turkmenistan celebrates, not independence, not victory or freedom or liberty, but the glorious, almighty melon.
Yes, melons.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Melon Day? Shouldn’t we honor the melon, the noblest of fruits, every day?”
Yes we should. But in Turkmenistan they have taken melon worship to a new level, dedicating one of the country’s 19 national holidays to the fruit.
“All Turkmens celebrate this holiday. The Turkmen melon is the source of our pride, its taste has no equal in the world, the smell makes your head spin,” proclaimed Turkmenistan’s former leader, the late President Niyazov, who created the holiday in 1994.
Turkmenistan grows over 200 types of melon, ranging in size from a potato-sized melon to 18kg monsters. The national melon is the muskmelon.
Whether the knife falls on the mellon or the melon on the knife, the melon suffers.
African proverb
Many wagon-loads of enormous water-melons were brought to market every day, and I was sure to see groups of men, women, and children seated on the pavement round the spot where they were sold, sucking in prodigious quantites of this water fruit. Their manner of devouring them is extremely unpleasant; the huge fruit is cut into half a dozen sections, of about a foot long, and then, dripping as it is with water, applied to the mouth, from either side of which pour copious streams of the fluid, while, ever and anon, a mouthful of the hard black seeds are shot out in all directions, to the great annoyance of all within reach. When I first tasted this fruit I thought it very vile stuff indeed, but before the end of the season we all learned to like it.
We are convinced there can be no peace and progress in India if we, the Muslims are duped into a Hindu dominated federation in which we cannot be the masters of our own destiny and captains of our own souls.
Choudhary Rahmat Ali
Choudhary Rahmat Ali was not the leader of a nation, a war hero, a politician, or a prince’s son. But his contribution to the world over 60 years ago can be seen clearly on any map of the world.
He was born in Punjab in 1897 in what was then British India. He was a graduate student at Cambridge University in England during the 1930s, a turbulent decade in his homeland. Muslims in British India saw the winds of change approaching as Indian leaders of both religions pushed for independence from the British Empire. Muslims were concerned about being a minority in a Hindu nation.
In January 1933, Rahmat Ali wrote a booklet, “Now or Never,” in which he laid out the concerns of 30 million Muslims and non-Hindus in the region. He described India not as a country, but as a continent, too diverse to be simplified and categorized as a Hindu nation.
He proposed that the Muslim territories of Punjab, Afghan (Northwest Frontier Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan be accorded “national status, as distinct from the other inhabitants of India” and be granted “a separate Federal Constitution on religious, social, and historical grounds.”
His proposal was not a new one. But he did suggest a name for the separate nation. Taking the first initials of four provinces–Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, and Sind–and the end of Baluchistan, he created the name “PAKiStan.” The name also had another meaning: in Urdu pak means “pure” and stan means land.
Rahmat Ali provided an all-encompassing name for a diverse, amorphous group of 30 million people previously known to the outside world as ‘Indians’; the name Pakistan resonated both with the Muslims of India and the non-Urdu speaking world. The name and the idea of a separate Pakistan stuck.
India-Pakistan partition (red = conflict areas)
On August 14, 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two separate nations: the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.
In terms of speed and sheer numbers, the mass migration that followed the partition has no equal in human history.
In a matter of months, over 7 million Muslims living in the newly-independent nation of India moved to the new nation of Pakistan, located in two separate parts, east and west of India. (East Pakistan is now Bangladesh). Meanwhile, another 7 million, Hindus and Sikhs, moved from those areas into the new nation of India. Violence between Muslims and Hindus escalated. There are no precise statistics, but it is believed about half a million people died during the migration, from bloody conflicts and from the dire living conditions that neither nation was prepared to combat.
Today is Independence Day in Pakistan, a time of celebration, but also of remembrance.
Pakistan itself became the subject of partition in 1971. The Bengali-dominated eastern-half of the country, known as East Pakistan, broke away to become what is now Bangladesh.
Even without Bangladesh, by population Pakistan is the 6th largest nation in the world.
All across India sisters tie special colored bracelets of thread around their brothers’ wrists, as a symbol of protection. Likewise, the thread reminds the brother of his pledge and duty to protect his sister.
The threaded bracelet is called a rakhi and the holiday is Raksha Bandhan, a Hindu and Sikh celebration of brothers and sisters. It falls on the full moon (Shravan Poornima) in August. (August 16, 2008. August 5, 2009.)
There are two main stories of how the tradition came about.
One is that the goddess Draupadi tore a strip from her sari and wrapped it around Krishna’s wounded finger after battle. Later, Krishna returned the favor. When Draupadi’s malevolent brother-in-law attempted to dishonor her by removing her sari, Krishna continuously elongated her sari so she could not be disrobed.
Another is that Shashikala blessed a silken talisman and tied it around Lord Indra’s right wrist to protect him from harm during the battle of gods and demons. The rakhi gave him the strength to defeat them.
The tradition was further popularized during India’s Moghul period in the 16th century. Facing attack from the sultan of Gujarat, Queen Karnavati of Rajasthan sent a sacred Rakhi thread to the Mughal emperor Humayan, to remind him of their special connection and in the hopes of receiving assistance against the enemy.
This year in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, about 700 young men and women at H.K. Arts College reversed the tradition. Boys bestowed Rakhi on the girls as a symbol of determination to stop female foeticide, a crime that is largely responsible for lopsided male:female ratio in India, especially in states like Gujarat where that ratio is 100 to 83.
Women’s Day in Tunisia isn’t celebrated on March 8th like much of the rest of the world, but on August 13, in commemoration of the Tunisian Code of Personal Status, enacted on this day in 1956.
The Code and the principles it endorsed sent shock waves across the Islamic world when it was created. Among other things, the Code established judicial divorce proceedings, gave women the right to request divorce, set the minimum age for marriage at 17, abolished polygamy, regulated alimony payments, improved women’s standing in child custody proceedings and inheritance matters, and reduced gender inequality in general.
The Code of Personal Status was one of the first major legislative actions of the new government. Tunisia had only gained independence from France in March of that year.
It’s been said, the Code differs from women’s rights legislation in other nations in that, though supported by active women’s groups such as the National Union of Tunisian Women, the Code was not a reaction to a widespread grass-roots movement, but an action of a reformist government in a recently-independent nation with the purpose of modernizing Tunisian societal structure to enable Tunisia to compete in an industrialized, post-war world.
