Saint Patrick, the legend behind the world known holiday, is the best known of the Patron Saints of Ireland. He was British, born a Romano- Briton, and is best known as the…
Category: Folklore
How Valentine’s Day became a secular holiday.
So now that you have read about St. Valentine in our previous blog, how did we go from his story to having the secular holiday of Valentine’s Day? Despite the heart shapes…
Saint Valentine – The origin of Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day, also known as St. Valentine’s Day and celebrated usually on February 14, started as the feast day for St. Valentine. The feast day was first created by Pope Gelasius in…
Chinese New Year – Year of the Pig
As a young girl, I was always fascinated by Chinese New Year. I would read about the celebrations and often talked to some of my father’s graduate students about it and learned…
St. Lucia’s Day
Once, when I was a little girl, I had a friend who was so very excited about representing Saint Lucia at her church. St. Lucy was her favorite Saint, because my…
Christmas Tinsel: The Legend of the Christmas Spider
This was one of my favorite holiday stories as a child, and like all folktales there are many variations of it. This is the version I remember from my youth. The Legend…
Hanukkah – The Dreidels
In our A Brief History of Hanukkah blog, we mentioned the Dreidel game, a game associated now with Hanukkah and RoseAnna and I thought it would be fun to write a little…
St. Nicholas’ Day: Who Was Santa Claus?
When I was a little girl, I loved best of all, the magic of Christmastime. It was a strange time of year because my birthday is a week before Christmas. I was…
A Brief History of Hanukkah
Hanukkah is known as the “Festival of Lights”, “Feast of Dedication” or the “Feast of the Maccabees”. It is a Jewish Holiday that commemorates the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem…
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving Day can mean a lot of things for different people—a time for family, a time to enjoy some really good food, and even the start of the holiday season. It can…