Holidays-info.com It’s Summer—Time to Celebrate!
Summer is a time filled with sun, pool days and outdoor sports. One thing summers in the United States seem to lack, however, is holidays. For three whole months, the only major holiday to look forward to is the Fourth of July. Why don’t you and your child celebrate holidays from around the world this summer? It’s a great opportunity to have some fun and learn about other cultures. Here are just a few holidays to get you started:
- National Flower Day (Iran): June 15 is National Flower Day in Iran. This holiday has recently passed, but it would still be fun to plant some flowers or visit a conservatory!
- June Solstice: June 21 is the longest day of 2009 in the Northern Hemisphere and the official beginning of summer there. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the shortest day of the year and the start of winter. This is the perfect opportunity to talk to your child about the Earth’s tilted axis and why we have seasons. A globe beach ball can be a big help with the explanation, and it also works great for a game of volleyball afterward!
- Canada Day (Canada): July 1 marks the anniversary of the Constitution Act of 1867, which united the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Province of Canada into a federation of provinces. Celebrate by playing some street hockey, having a picnic and checking out Canadian trivia. Did you know the baseball glove was invented in Canada?
- Melon Day (Turkmenistan): On the second Sunday in August, citizens of Turkmenistan celebrate the country’s muskmelon crops, particularly a new Turkmen crossbreed known as the “Turkmenbashi melon.” On August 9, celebrate by sharing some delicious muskmelon, like honeydew or cantaloupe.
- Tanabata, or Star Festival (Japan): On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Japanese celebrate the meeting of Orihime and Hikoboshi. According to legend, these two star-crossed lovers live in the sky on opposite sides of the Amanogawa River, or Milky Way. They are allowed to meet each other once a year. In modern-day Japan, people celebrate this holiday by writing wishes on small slips of paper called tanzaku and hanging them on bamboo. The seventh day of the seventh lunar month this year is August 26, 2009, although other Tanabata celebrations will also occur on July 7 and August 7.
Of course, this is just the beginning. There are many more summer celebrations from all over the world to explore. Happy holidays!
Holidays-info.com Momfidence: Toy-Shopping Tales
Columnist Paula Spencer shares her story about shopping for children’s Christmas gifts
Early December, 2006: it’s time for the annual letters to Santa. The children get busy watching TV commercials, notepads in hand.
“A wish list isn’t an order form,” I remind them. As I always do. Every year my four kids’ wishes grow more sophisticated. And more specific. (“Gray leggings with lace along the bottom, size XS, see Store XX catalog, page 34.”)
Every year there are new computer games, gizmos and toys whose names I have to Google just to figure out what they are. So it’s with relief that I finally recognize one item on the list of my youngest, Page: a three-story doll dream house.
There’s a fine line between being a generous, well-intentioned parent and becoming one of those Furby-hunting, Wii-stalking, Tickle-Me-Elmo scufflers in the news every year. I used to think the problem lay with the kids, who, greedily expecting ponies or laptops (or Cabbage-Patch-Kids-of-the-Year), pushed their parents into becoming frantic, obsessed shoppers.
I was wrong. The root problem of holiday-shopping-gone-mad isn’t the kids. It’s the parents. My hot pursuit of the three-story dream house started rationally enough. I knew what it was and liked it. But then I really thought about it. It costs over $100, and we already own a two-story talking townhouse dream house and a two-story country villa dream house, not to mention a doll airplane, doll convertible, doll jeep and doll cruise ship. (I drew the line at the hot-tub party bus.) Anyway, it’s relatively low on her (lengthy) wish list, so, no, I think we’ll pass.
But then I make the first strategic error of gift giving run amok: I start overthinking. I mull how my doll-buying days are numbered as this last daughter nears the age of outgrowing them. (I have three daughters, which explains why our Barbies already live a high life to rival Madonna’s.)
My own dolls had resided in cardboard boxes cleverly decorated by my mother with shoebox-lid beds and stools made from wooden spools. Nice, but I longed for a “real” dollhouse like my cousin Juli’s, which folded up like a briefcase so you could tote it to friends’ houses to scar them for life with envy. I decide to splurge on the dream house after all.
There’s only one problem: It’s sold out. Everywhere.
Somehow I doubt my mother ever panicked over nabbing a Mystery Date board game or the latest Nancy Drew book for me. To calm myself, I decide to substitute a princess castle. It costs less, I rationalize, and will be the perfect accompaniment to the princess dolls, book and DVD that the Jolly Old Elf is sure to deliver.
“So what do you want Santa to bring you?” a neighbor asks Page one day soon after. I’m confident the answer will involve princesses, which we’ve strategically been talking up all week.
“A three-story doll dream house,” she says instantly. It’s her first mention of it since she wrote out her list.
“Ah. And what else?” I prompt her nervously.
“Nothing,” she declares. “But we already have two dollhouses. And a cruise ship.”
“But they aren’t mine.”
“Can’t you all share?”
That’s when the phone rings, and a few minutes later she’s telling Grandma about the three-story doll dream house, too. “It has a dishwasher and toilet that make noise. And a musical doorbell. And 60 accessories!”
After the kids’ bedtime, I sheepishly log on to eBay. Plenty of dream houses there—going for more than $200! No way. Instead I bid on a princess horse and carriage to soften the blow (and soothe my mommy guilt).
The next evening, a miracle! A store I’d checked earlier e-mails me to say that, yes, they did get more dream houses in stock and “they are likely to go fast so click here and buy now; you have until midnight to take advantage of this last day of standard shipping charges.” I click. It’s in my cyber shopping cart.
A rational sliver left in me hesitates. By now I’ve spent so much money on Page’s Christmas that another $100, plus $15 for shipping, hurts. I’ll have to return the castle, which means another trip to the mall, something I usually try to avoid at all costs the week before Christmas. I ask my husband what he thinks.
“Whatever you want. Don’t they already have six or seven of those things?” he says. He’s right. Then again, he’s still sane and not the one actually buying the present. I’ve left the calm world of commonsense gift buying and fallen into the clutches of illusion. I’m fixated on a particular image of Christmas morning joy—though whether it’s Page’s joy, or the vicarious thrill of the deprived child in me, I can’t say. I think about her running to the tree in ecstacy at the sight of her biggest wish come true. (Cue the joyous carols and the scent of warm gingerbread!)
The dream house has become, in my mind, the linchpin to her holiday, even as I know deep down that it will soon enough wind up as more ignored plastic on the playroom floor. Even as I know the real reason for the season.
Even as I have better things to obsess over, like the rest of my shopping list and cookie baking and tree trimming…
She wants it! Christmas is no time for parsimony, the irrational devil-side of me whispers. You’re only 6 once. And the dream house must be “meant to be,” since they got more in stock just in time for me to get it—without paying special shipping charges or having to battle my way into an actual store.
What the heck. I slink back to the computer to hit “purchase.” Too late. It’s sold out. Again.
No! I’d put it in my e-cart! Not two hours have passed! Stunned, I click frenetically to eBay. Bids on three-story dream houses now top $600. If only I’d bought three this afternoon and resold two, I might have financed my whole Christmas! But she would be so thrilled…
I waver. That a voice inside my head is still trying to rationalize me into behavior that goes against both my scruples and my wallet is proof I’ve reached the tipping point of guilt-infused madness.
The moral of this story is not “Shop Early and Be Decisive,” although that’s not bad advice. It’s “Know When to Step Away from the Computer” (which—whew!—I did). Resist camping out in front of stores. Stop driving madly within a 100-mile radius in hot pursuit of the “thing” that will make or break Christmas. Because it won’t.
Yes, I blew it by not buying the gift when I had the chance. But we all have our reasons for our choices. I try to pick presents based on love and good intentions. But trying to keep up with the transient, TV-commercial-inspired whims of an excited child is a game parents can’t win, at least not while keeping their common sense intact.
Was my daughter disappointed at no dream house? Yes. Did she have an unhappy Christmas? No. Did she play with the princess castle and dozens of other gifts instead? Yes. Am I embarrassed to be telling you I came thisclose to gift insanity? Not as embarrassed as I’d be if I’d blown $600 on a toy!
Maybe someday Page will scour interplanetary cyberspace for an elusive Ten-Story Dream Condo-Pod for one of my future grandkids, egged on by her own unmet desire. I hope she finds it. But if she can’t, I hope she understands it doesn’t really matter so much.
Holidays-info.com
THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Why do we decorate the Christmas tree? The habit is probably inherited from the Egyptians that used to decorate their houses with palm tree leaves in the day of the astrological winter. The habit was taken by the Romans that used instead of palm trees the conifers.
But the story really begins around the 7th century when a monk from Devonshire came to Germany to teach the word of the Lord. Legend says that he used the triangular form of the Christmas tree to symbolize religious meanings. In the Europe of the 12th century, on Christmas day, the Christmas tree was installed upside down, hanging down from the ceiling!
It appears the tree was first decorated at Riga in 1510. At the beginning of the 16Ith century, M. Luther decorated the tree with candles to suggest to his children the sparklings of the stars in the sky.
At the middle of the 16th century, in Germany, appear the first markets specialized in selling presents for Christmas, usually food or objects of practical use.
Christmas decorations that were meant to suggest snow were invented in Germany in 1610. At that time not only they were silvery, but they were also made out of silver. There were invented machines to make thin silver strings for the tree. Silver lasted long but it oxidized very quickly, so they tried to ally it with cooper and zinc, but the product was so heavy that it just broke under the action of his own weight. So silver was used till the middle of the 20th century.
In Great Britain, the Christmas tree came along with merchants that originated from Germany and settled in England. Decorating the Christmas tree meant silver ornaments, candles and pearl-like ribbons all produced in Germany and Eastern Europe at the time. The custom said that every family member or invited person had to have a little tree placed on the table in front of him, with the presents besides it.
In 1846, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – both born in Germany – appear in “Illustrated London News”, along with their children, all around the Christmas tree. The popularity of the regal family made this custom to spread fast among the people. The tree became a fashion matter not only in the Britain Islands, but also on the eastern coast of America.
Decorations were of a huge variety. Mostly home made because they were expensive at the time. Young ladies spent hours cutting paper snowflakes and stars, folding presents envelopes and paper supports for candy.
In America, the Christmas tree appears around 1747, in German communities from Pennsylvania, but it spreads only along with the development of communications, at the middle of the 19th century.
In 1882 the electric light bowl is invented and in 1892 it is adapted for the Christmas tree.
And so, we get to our present tree that combines all the elements presented above in the most ingenious and creative mixtures.
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