every day's a holiday!

November 7, 2011November 10, 2011

Day of Accord and Reconciliation – Russia

November 7

November 7 is (or was) Day or Accord and Reconciliation in Russia. The holiday celebrates the anniversary of the October Revolution in 1917.

In early 1917, the February Revolution overthrew the centuries-old tsarist regime and established a provisional parliamentary government, of which Alexander Kerensky became the head.

Kerensky and the provisional government supported the continuation of the war against Germany, a position that proved unpopular with starving Russians. The Bolsheviks—the farthest left-reaching political party—under Vladimir Lenin supported immediate withdrawal. Lenin and the Bolsheviks gained momentum and power over the course of the year. After Kerensky declared Russia a republic, the Bolsheviks led a revolt and stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, ending the provisional government.

Civil War raged through Russia over the next five years, during which the Bolsheviks established themselves as the sole government of the Soviet Union.

The revolution took place on October 24/25 according to the old calendar in Russia. The date translates to November 7.

Known as Revolution Day throughout the history of the Soviet Union, the holiday lost its importance after the U.S.S.R.’s dissolution in 1991.

In 1996, Boris Yeltsin changed the name to Day of Accord and Reconciliation in order to emphasize the unity of the Russian people rather than its divisions.

In recent years the holiday has merged in the Russia psyche with November 4’s Unity Day, a pre-Soviet holiday rechristened by Vladimir Putin. Unity Day commemorates the Russian victory over Polish invaders in 1612.

Whether November 7 or November 4 will emerge as the big November holiday in years to come has yet to be reconciled.

Update: According to Russian sources, November 4 has supplanted November 7 as the national holiday.

November 6, 2011November 10, 2011

Green March – Morocco

November 6

Nope, this has little to do with the environmental movement. Green here signifies the religion of Islam, and the March in question was led by Moroccans protesting Spain’s continued occupation of the Western Sahara (then Spanish Sahara) well into the 1970s.

The Green March was orchestrated by Morocco’s King Hasan II who emphasized Western Sahara’s long-standing ties with his country.

In 1975, faced with growing international opposition and fighting within the territory, Spain announced the possibility of creating an independent state out of Spanish Sahara.

However, both Morocco and Mauritania (to the southeast) had claims to the territory. Hasan took the case to the International Court of Justice. The Court determined that there were ties between the Saharan territory and Morocco, but that the ties were not substantial at the time of Spain’s colonization of the territory; thus the Court recommended a Saharan referendum on self-determination.

In a televised announcement, Hasan emphasized the first part of the Court’s recommendation—the territory’s ties to Morocco—and called on Moroccans to liberate Spanish Sahara by means of a massive peaceful march.

On November 6, 1975, around 350,000 unarmed Moroccans assembled on their southern border and crossed over into then-Spanish territory calling for the return of Moroccan Sahara. The Spanish commanders refused to fire on the unarmed civilians as Hasan had predicted. The Green March went off peacefully and triumphantly. Later that month Spain agreed to temporary joint administration of the territory with Morocco and Mauritania, after which Western Sahara would be split between the two African nations.

Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara in 1979 after a guerrilla war movement in favor of Saharan independence. The anniversary of Green March is a triumphant holiday in Morocco, although the call for independence is still hotly debated in Western Sahara.

Morocco Since 1830: A History, by C.R. Pennell

Why Green?

There’s little evidence in the Qur’an for green’s emergence as the color most symbolic of Islam, but numerous Muslim countries include green on their flags. In fact Libya’s flag is entirely green, the only single-color banner in the world.

One Surah (76:21) does notes that in paradise, denizens will be clad in green robes of fine silk.

Other sources claim that the Prophet Muhammad wore green and used green in his armies’ banners.

Still other theologians point to green as the color of nature and of life. So in a sense the Green March may have been related to the environmental movement after all…

November 5, 2011November 14, 2011

Eid al-Adha II

“There is no deed more precious in the sight of Allah, nor greater in reward, than a good deed done during the ten days of Sacrifice.”

Prophet Mohammad reported by Ibn Abbas

Islamic Star and Crescent

[Published Dec. 9, 2008] It brings me great joy to write about Eid al-Adha today. Not just because it’s one of the holiest days of Islam, and one of only two Eids (Festivals).

It’s also because Eid al-Adha is the first holiday I wrote about for Every Day’s a Holiday, which means we’ve come almost full circle. Since the Islamic calendar is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, it hasn’t quite been a solar year, but we’re getting there.

I have learned so much about the Islamic calendar over the past year, my head hurts. I used to think, Why does the Islamic calendar have to be different from every other calendar in the world? Not all calendars are 365 days long, but at least they make some effort to correct themselves every few years. A leap day, leap week, leap month. Leap something! The Islamic calendar says, uh-uh. Pay no heed to seasons. A month observed in the summer 15 years ago is observed in the winter now, and vice-versa.

It struck me as counterintuitive. Or some kind of weird trick to play on kids. But now, after following the calendar through a full cycle, I see two reasons.

The first is that as all other calendars shift in relation to the Islamic calendar, Muslims get to share and contrast their celebrations and holy days with all other cultures.

This year, 1429 AH (2008 AD), Ashura was observed the between the Baha’i Faith’s World Religion Day and the first day of Christian Unity Week of Prayer.

The holiest third of the month of Ramadan just touched the ten days of atonement of the Jewish calendar, observed between the High Holy Days. Precisely as Muslims broke the fast with Eid al-Fitr, the Jews began the fast of Rosh Hashanah.

And Eid al-Adha this week coincides with the Catholic Festival of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), both of which speak to the bond between parent and child, and the bond between humanity and God.

Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, commemorates the moment when Abraham nearly sacrificed his son at Allah’s request. And the moment the Lord stopped Abraham in time to offer him a ram to take Ishmael’s place.

It is this moment between Abraham and his son Ishmael, that the Prophet Mohammad set forth as the defining event of Islam, which means literally, “submission”. For this reason, the structure known as the Kaaba–where Abraham first introduced monotheism to the world–was sanctified by Mohammad as holiest site on Earth.

During Eid al-Adha Muslims strive to experience the oneness of God, beginning with a special prayer:

In the name of God
And God is the greatest
O God, indeed this is from you and for you
O God, accept from me

And just as when we make a sacrifice for a friend or a loved one, we find that the sacrifice was not from us, but for us.

Last year’s Eid al-Adha

November 4, 2011November 14, 2011

Hajj: the fifth pillar of Islam

November 4-7, 2011

Today begins the Hajj to Mecca in which millions of Muslims around the world will leave their homes to embark on the journey that every financially and physically able Muslim must take once in their lifetime.

Destination: Makkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia.

The Hajj to Mecca has been called the most diverse gathering of human beings ever assembled. Participants come from all countries, all races, and all walks of life.

Mecca is the city toward which, the rest of the year, Muslims pray five times a day. During Hajj millions converge on the Masjid al Haram, the holiest mosque in all Islam. The Holy Mosque’s open court can accommodate hundreds of thousands of worshipers, who circumambulate (I don’t get to use that word very often) around the centerpiece of the court: the Kaaba. The Kaaba is a stoic black cube which holds a sacred stone believed to have fallen from heavens in the days of Adam.

kaaba 1880 — Kaaba in the middle of the Holy Mosque, circa 1880

It was here, thousands of years ago that Abraham and his son Ishmael introduced the world to monotheism, by building a small temple in the middle of the desert, as commanded by God. Abraham shouted out to the empty desert a welcome to anyone who would join him in prayer at the Kaaba. Each year during Hajj, millions answer his call.

Though the people of the Arabian peninsula have revered the site long before the days of Mohammad, it was the Prophet who set the stone in its final place. Muslims don’t worship the stone itself–Islam allows no idols of any kind. Rather, the place is revered for its connection to the Prophet Muhammad and to God.

This holy meteor has never been carbon-dated, but it was stolen once. According to www.lancashiremosques.com:

In 317/930 the Qarmatians raided Mecca; they captured the stone, and carried it off to al-Hasa or Bahrayn, where it was kept. Ransom was offered for it, which was ignored. Then in 340/951 it was thrown, the historian Juwayni relates, into the Friday Mosque of Kufah with a note: “By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back.”

During Hajj, pilgrims enter a state of Ihram. During Ihram one may not intentionally harm any living creature, and men must wear two pieces of unstitched cloth, one around their waist and one over their shoulders. As Kamran Pasha, author of Mother of Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam, explains:

In this way, all pilgrims are dressed exactly the same, eliminating differences of race, culture and economic status. Whether we are kings or paupers, whether we wear suits and ties or dashikis in the world we left behind, we are all the same now – human beings standing equally before our Creator, devoid of manmade distinctions.

Hajj is a spiritual journey, but it is also one of visas and vaccinations. passports and paperwork. The more one prepares, the better. Saudi Arabia does its best to accommodate over a million foreigners crossing its borders for the pilgrimage, but travel prices can be jacked up four-fold during, and sadly, “A number of pilgrims have reported being unable to reach Mecca due to fraudulent travel agencies eager to cash in on the world’s largest religious pilgrimage.”

Circling the Kabah seven times is the most important part of Hajj, but not all of it. Pilgrims also follow the footsteps of Hagar and her son Ishmael as they searched for water in the desert millennia ago. It is said Ishmael struck his foot on the ground and water sprang forth from the sand.

One couple’s unforgettable first Haj

A Journey of Hajj: Recreating Genesis at the House of God

Millions of Muslims Prepare For Hajj 2009

November 4, 2011November 6, 2011

Russian Unity Day

November 4

Russia’s current incarnation of Unity Day dates all the way back to the early 21st century. Yep, it’s fairly new in that respect, but the reason for the celebration goes back to 1612.

In the early 17th century Russia faced full-scale invasion from its Polish-Lithuanian neighbors to the West. These days it’s hard to think of Russia as threatened by Poland and Lithuania, but in 1569 the latter two formed a mighty union known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Polish army got as far east as Moscow, and surprisingly 5000 Polish cavalry defeated a force of 35,000 Russian soldiers outside the city, a devastating loss to the Russian army and public morale.

This was known as the Time of Troubles in Russia, referring to the period when Russia lacked a Tsar. Tsar Feodor Ivanovich died in 1598 without heir. The Romonov dynasty would not emerge as the clear leader of the country and reestablish the Tsardom until 1613.

In 1612 a local merchant named Kuzma Minin gathered a ragtag volunteer “national militia” to fight against the Poles. Led by Knyaz Dmitry Pozharsky, the group laid siege to the city and finally ousted the the Poles from Moscow in October (Old Calendar) that year.

The Russians began celebrating the anniversary of the ouster on October 22 (Oct. 22 O.S./Nov. 4 New) in the generations thereafter.

After the formation of the Soviet Union the celebration lost popularity in favor of the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution.

In 2005 Russia re-established November 4 (October 22 Old School) as Russia’s Unity Day.

Today the main square of the Kremlin is named for Minin and Pozharsky, though Pozharsky gets the short end of the deal, as it’s known colloquially as Minin Square.

November 3, 2011November 6, 2011

Bunka no Hi – Culture Day – Japan

November 3

In Japan, November 3 is Culture Day, or “Bunka no Hi“. The present incarnation dates only to 1948, but Bunka no Hi follows a much older tradition. November 3 was the birthday of the Meiji Emperor (1852-1912) which was celebrated by the whole nation during the Emperor’s reign. The Meiji Emperor is credited for, among other things, ushering Japan into the modern era.

November 3 is also the anniversary of the creation of the post-war Constitution in 1946.

On Bunka no Hi the government awards the Bunka Kunsho—Order of Culture Awards. These are the highest academic and cultural achievement awards in the nation.

Each region has its own ways of celebrating the holiday, but throughout Japan, many communities host parades on November 3. Participants wear the uniforms and dress of olden days and remember the traditions of a bygone era.

“Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.”

— Kozan Ichikyo

Photos and article of Bunka no Hi

November 2, 2011November 6, 2011

All Souls Day

November 2

…For it’s the turn of the year and All Souls’ night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight…

Edith Wharton, All Souls

Whereas All Saints Day recognizes the departed whose souls have found refuge in Heaven, All Souls Day remembers those restless spirits still lingering in Purgatory.

All Souls Day originated not in Rome but France.

Around 820 Amalarius of Metz (northwest of Strasbourg) wrote “After the offices of the saints, I have inserted an office for the dead. For many pass over from this present age who are not immediately united with the saints.” (ie. “don’t go directly to heaven.”)

In the early 11th century, St. Odilo, fifth abbot of the Cluny monastery, officiated the feast of All Souls on November 2. Over the century, the tradition was adopted by dioceses across Western Europe.

On All Souls Day, families visit the graves of their loved ones and light candles in their memory.

Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of the their feet on the grass…
…For the year’s on the turn and it’s All Souls’ night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite…

…Let them see us and hear us, and say: “Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!”

All Souls Day is celebrated on November 2, unless the 2nd falls on a Sunday, in which case it’s observed on Monday, November 3 as was the case in 2008.

November 1, 2011November 6, 2011

All Saints Day

November 1

Every day of the Catholic calendar honors at least one Saint.

But for all those Saints who just weren’t saintly enough to get their own day, there’s All Saints Day.

Okay, not exactly.

Medieval liturgists traced All Saints Day in the Catholic Church to the consecration of the Pantheon, originally a pagan temple built by Emperor Hadrian around 125 AD. The Pantheon honored the Roman, well, Pantheon (literally, “All Gods”.)

On May 13, 609 or 610, the Pantheon was consecrated by Pope Boniface IV in the name of the Virgin Mary and All Martyrs. The date, May 13, may harken back to the old festival Lemuralia, during which Romans remembered the dead and cast out restless spirits.

In the 730s Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel at St. Peters Basilica on November 1 and declared it an annual holy day. The chapel housed the relics “of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world.”

St. Peters Basilica is believed to be the burial place of Saint Peter himself. This, the most famous place of worship in Christendom was built beside the “Circus” of Caligula, where the Emperor Nero organized mass executions of Christians beginning in 65 AD.

St. Peter was crucified there (upside-down) at the site in 67 AD. Today the Vatican City’s Colonnade surrounds what was once the notorious Circus, its center marked by an enormous Obelisk brought to Rome after the conquest of Egypt.

Some historians attribute the November 1 date to the church’s desire to supplant regional harvest festival holidays devoted to the dead, such as the Celtic Samhain.

Today All Saints Day glorifies the memory of those souls, known and unknown, who have found a place in heaven.

For all those stuck in Purgatory, there’s All Souls Day…