The “Chong Yang Festival” is celebrated on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, and it is as such known as the Double Ninth Festival.
Origins: The festival began as early as the discount mbt shoes Warring States Period (475 – 221 BC). According to the yin/yang dichotomy that forms a basis to the Chinese world view, yin represents the elements of darkness and yang represents life and brightness. The number nine is regarded as yang. The ninth day of the ninth month is a double yang day, hence the name “Chong Yang Festival”. (Chong means “repeat” in Chinese.) The ninth month also heralds the approach of winter. It is a time when the living need warm clothing, and filial Chinese sons and daughters extended this to make the festival a time for providing winter clothes for their ancestors. The Double Ninth Festival, therefore, also became an occasion to visit the graves of dead family members. Clothes made of paper would then be burnt as offerings.
Climbing mountains: On the Double Ninth Festival, people customarily climb mountains, appreciate chrysanthemum flowers, drink chrysanthemum wine, and eat double-ninth cakes. The Double Ninth Festival is also the “Old Men Festival”. Old people are especially meant to improve their health by taking part in the activities on the day of the festival.
Family get-togethers: The Double Ninth Festival is also a time for family get-togethers. It is an occasion to remember one’s ancestors, the sacrifices they made and the hardships they underwent. Often, family outings are organised during which people search to renew their appreciation of nature and to reaffirm their love and concern for family members and close friends.
Sweetest Day is always the third Saturday in October. This holiday is much more important in some regions than in others (Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo being the biggest Sweetest Day cities). It is a holiday that is gaining in popularity every year throughout the country.
Sweetest Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in October as a day to make someone happy. It is an occasion which offers all of us an opportunity to remember not only the sick, aged, and orphaned, but also friends, relatives and associates whose helpfulness and kindness we have enjoyed.
Over 60 years ago, a Cleveland man, believing that the city’s orphans and shut-ins too often felt forgotten and neglected, conceived the idea of showing them that they were remembered. He mbt outlet did this through the distribution of small gifts. With the help of his friends and neighbors, he distributed these small remembrances on a Saturday in October. During the years that followed, other Clevelanders began to participate in the celebration ceremony, which came to be called “Sweetest Day”. In time, the Sweetest Day idea of spreading cheer to the underprivileged was broadened to include everyone, and became an occasion for remembering others with a kind act or a small remembrance. And soon the idea spread to other cities all over the country.
Sweetest Day is not based on any single group’s religious sentiment or on a family relationship. It is a reminder that a thoughtful word or deed enriches life and gives it meaning.
Because for many people remembering takes the form of gift-giving, Sweetest Day offers us the opportunity to show others that we care, in a tangible way. United Nations Day was established by Presidential Proclamation to commemorate the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
It is celebrated very generally in all states and American possessions, and by all eighty-one countries, which are members of the United Nations for the purpose of informing the people of the world as to the aims, purposes, and achievements of the UN.
The name “United Nations” was devised by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was first used in the “Declaration by United Nations” of January 1, 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers
The representatives of 50 countries at the United Nations Conference drew up the United Nations Charter on International Organization, which met at San Francisco from April 25 to June 26, 1945. Those delegates deliberated on the basis of proposals worked out by the representatives of China, the Soviet Union, and United Kingdom in the United States at Dumbarton Oaks from August to October of 1944. The representatives of the 50 countries signed the Charter on June 26, 1945. Poland, which was not represented at the Conference, signed it later and became one the original 51 Member States.
The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France, The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, United States and by a majority of other signatories. United Nations Day is celebrated on October 24 each year.
In order to stress the charter’s importance, in 1947 the General Assembly of the U.N. passed a resolution that October 24 shall hereafter be officially called United Nations Day, and shall be devoted to making known to the people of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations, and to gaining their support for the work of the United Nations.
It was apparent, and also quite important, that the general public should be informed about the content and purposes of the United Nations; therefore an entire week-United Nations Week-was set aside in October, with its chief observance on United Nations Day, October 24.
By 1956, the American committee for the United Nations promoted the celebration of United Nations week. The official American Association for the United Nations sent out information and suggestions for programs with this advice: This is United Nations Week. The success of the United Nations in building world peace depends on all of us-on our won understanding and support; know how it works, and what it is doing. Help the United Nations help all of us to a peaceful future.
In some towns there is a public rally , perhaps at the City Hall, with the Stars and Stripes displayed with the flag of the United Nations. Speakers stress the accomplishments of the organization. Some shop windows feature products and dress of other lands. A town may put on an “International Festival” with songs and dances. During the week there are forums and panel discussions. An enjoy blending for United Nations Day is a banquet with foreign dishes.
An important part of the week’s observance is the setting up of information centers, where literature on the work of the United Nations may be obtained. Diwali symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. Celebrated joyously all over the country, it is a festival of wealth and prosperity.
The essence of this light is Shri Lakshmi-arising, at the beginning of time, out of the waters at the churning of the Milky Ocean by gods and demons for a thousand years. Regarded as the goddess of love, beauty and prosperity, Lakshmi, Kamla or Padma (Sanskrit words for lotus), the beloved consort of Vishnu, along with the dearly loved pot-bellied, elephant headed, auspicious god of the Hindu theogony, Siri Ganesha, is a presiding deity of the festival of lights. They are worshipped in every household so that the year may be full of prosperity. Throughout the night a lamp is kept burning before her image so that she may continue to dwell in the house and bestow upon it the wealth of life.
‘Dipavali’ means a row of lights (’Diwali’ is simply a corrupt form of it) and the festival is so called because of the illuminations that mark the celebrations.
Every Hindu home, rich or poor, it given a spring cleaning a few days prior to the auspicious day, whitewashed and adorned in a festive way. Rows of little earthen lamps illuminate terraces and gardens, walls and courtyards, outer and inner precincts of a temple or a palace. That it was so from ancient times is borne by kings and travelers who have recorded the celebrations.
King Harsha described it as ‘Dipapratipadotsava’ and King Bhoja calls it ‘Sukharati’ (happy night) and describes how Lakshmi was venerated and worshipped at dusk and lamps lit in her honour on roadsides and river banks, on hill and tree, in home and temple. To Jimutavahana it was the ‘vow of a happy night’ (Sukharatrivarta’)
Another legend speaks of how Bali was deprived of his kingdom by Vishnu on this day. The good Daitya king, through austerities and devotion, had defeated the great Indra himself. The gods thus feeling humbled appeal to Vishnu for protection. Vishnu becoming manifest in his Dwarf incarnation (Vamana) begs Bali for as much land as he (Vishnu) can over in three steps. Having obtained the boon, Vishnu covers heaven and earth in two strides and would have covered the world in the third, but then respecting Bali’s goodness and generosity, he stopped short and left the nether world to the Datiya king. The legend, found in Rig-Veda, tells of Vishnu’s three strides-over earth, heaven and the nether world of Patala, symbolizing apparently the rising, culmination and setting of the sun. A zodiacal allegory couched in mythological terms, it points to the setting of the light of the sun and the emergence of the darkness associated with the lower realm. Changes of season, of course, but it tells of the heart of a people and their unlimited delight in life, in light, burning not outside but in the deeper recesses of the nether regions of cosmos and man. Why else should folk recall Bali and his reign on this day? We learn that in Maharashtra, discount mbt effigies of Bali in rice-flour and cow-dung are prepared by womenfolk who worship and invoke his blessings. Skanda Purana also refers to Bali being worshipped with fruits and flowers on this auspicious day by drawing this image on the ground in different hues.