Category Celebration All Around the World

Feast of Epiphany

In the Christian tradition, it is said that three wise men followed a guiding star to a stable in Bethlehem to see baby Jesus. There, they gave the child gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

With this story in mind, children in Puerto Rico fill their shoes with grass or straw just before bedtime on January 5. The grass or straw is for the animals ridden by the Three Wise Men, sometimes called the Three Kings. The next morning, known as the Feast of Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day, the children find sweets and toys in their shoes – gifts from the Three Kings.

Epiphany is also when some Churches remember when Jesus was Baptised, when he was about 30, and started to teach people about God. Epiphany means ‘revelation’ and both the visit of the Wise Men and his Baptism are important times when Jesus was ‘revealed’ to be very important.

Some Churches celebrate use Epiphany to celebrate and remember both the visit of the Wise Men and Jesus’s Baptism!

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How do you know what day a holiday falls on? You look at a calendar, of course! But long ago, the only “calendars” people had were the moon, the sun, the stars, and the changing seasons. Even today we still use calendars that follow the changes of the moon and the seasons.

People made the first calendars by dividing a year into 12 “moons,” or months. But they had a problem. A year is the time it takes the earth to travel once around the sun. This comes to about 365 days. A moon-month is the time from one new moon to the next – about 29 1/2 days. There are 12 months in a year. So 12 moon-months come to about 354 days. And this is 11 days less than a year!

Sometimes people added days or months to keep the calendar in step with the seasons. Over the years, some people developed a calendar that matched the seasons. They based this calendar on the solar year, or the time it takes for the earth to circle the sun. It has 365 days.

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Holidays and Calendars

Some holidays follow calendars based on the moon. These days are called “floating holidays” because they float around on our standard calendar. They are not celebrated on the same day each year. Many of these floating holidays are religious. They follow a religious calendar.

The Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar follows the moon. But it also groups years into sets of 12. Each year is named after an animal. The first of the twelve years is the Year of the Rat. This is followed by the years of the ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig.

The Hebrew Calendar

The Hebrew, or Jewish, calendar is also based on the moon. The Jews use it to fix the dates of their religious years. There are 12 months in the Hebrew calendar. An extra month, added seven times every 19 years, keeps the calendar more or less in time with the seasons. Also, days are added or taken away to make sure certain holy days fall on proper days of the week. As a result, a Jewish year can be as short as 353 days or as long as 385 days.

The Christian Calendar

Christian calendars use the moon to set some holy days, too. Easter, for example, can fall any time from March 22 to April 25. The exact date depends on the moon.

The Muslim Calendar

Muslims follow the religion of Islam. They also use a calendar based on the moon. It has 12 months of 30 or 29 days. Eleven times in every 30 years, an extra day is added to the calendar. This keeps the calendar in time with the moon, but not with the seasons.

The Islamic year is only 354 or 355 days long. It does not follow the calendar year that includes the months of January to December. That calendar year has 365 days. The Islamic year is about 11 days shorter than that. So each year, an Islamic holiday is about 11 days earlier than the year before. But in 32 1/2 years, it’s back to where it started.

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People celebrate for many reasons. Some people celebrate special family days. Other people get together as a group, a community, or even as a whole nation to celebrate a special event. Many celebrations are religious. People also celebrate certain times of the year.

Some celebrations take place on days when you don’t have to go to school and adults don’t have to go to work. These days are often marked with visits from friends and relatives and with special treats. Sometimes, people have picnics. And sometimes, people go to a church, a temple, or another house of worship.

Some of our festivals and celebrations mark the passing of the year and its changing seasons. These are usually very old customs. Long, long ago, before people had heating and electric lights, winter in many places was a hard time of dark days and bad weather. No wonder people celebrated the coming of summer with feasting and dancing! A good harvest at the end of the summer meant that there would be plenty to eat all winter. Everyone gave thanks for good crops.

Birthdays are favourite celebrations for many people. It’s fun to have a birthday cake with candles on it – one candle for every year of your life. Some people get birthday presents. Some people have a birthday party and invite all their friends.

Many people celebrate the birthday of their country. People also often celebrate the birthdays of religious leaders, presidents, kings and queens, national heroes, or other people they want to remember and honour.

Some holidays honour special groups of people. For example, certain days remind us of those who died fighting for their country. On other days, we honour people we love and respect, such as our parents and our teachers. A few holidays celebrate working people.

Some Christians celebrate “name days”. In some countries, children are named after Christian saints. Each saint has a special day, and children named after a saint celebrate on that saint’s day.

The word holiday comes from the words holy day – a day on which people pray or give thanks. Some holy days are celebrated by people all around the world. These important days may be remembered by going to a place of worship, by gathering together to pray, or by dressing up and having a good time. Some of the celebrations include feasting or a time of fasting. Fasting means that people stop eating, eat less than usual, or stop eating certain things.

Some celebrations are holidays, but not all of them. Today, we use the word holiday for any day of celebration, relaxation, or other change from an ordinary day.

On holidays, you may see parades with marching bands. At night, there may be dazzling fireworks.

Holidays are filled with traditions. People often prepare wonderful foods especially for holidays. People sometimes wear traditional clothes or brighten their homes and neighbourhoods with holiday lights and decorations. People also sing traditional songs and play holiday games. What are some of your favourite traditions?

We sometimes celebrate days that seem to be just for fun. On some of these days, we play jokes on people. On others, we get together with friends and neighbours to enjoy music, dancing, and singing.

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