All Year Round (Lifeways)
by Ann Druitt
from Hawthorn Press
This book is a treasure trove of tomorrow's fond childhood memories, all mingled with a mix of colored thread, delicious cooking smells, softly sparkling candlelight, and the snatches of favorite songs.
Brimming with stories, poems, activities, things to make, and songs, All Year Round offers a friendly guide to the seasonal round of festivals. Helpful drawings and diagrams illustrate this practical book. It contains a wealth of experience that can help families find their own way around the year.
Parents are encouraged to develop their traditions and family ways using this as a springboard. As the authors say, "the words are ours, the festivals are yours."
The authors believe that observing a round of festivals is an enjoyable way of bringing rhythm into children's lives, a way of providing meaningful landmarks to look forward to. Experiencing the unfolding year through stories, poems, and making seasonal tables encourages a love of nature. Each festival has a character of its own, bringing a special gift to family life. Celebrating together is important for families in all kinds of ways. This book offers suggestions about how to get going to all those who wish to deepen their understanding of the festive year.
Halloween: Customs, Recipes & Spells
by Silver RavenWolf
from Llewellyn Publications
The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to 400 Celebrations and Activities
by Jennifer Trainer Thompson
from Ten Speed Press
When a special activity evolves into a tradition within a family, it creates meaning, connection, and community and makes common occasions more momentous and memorable. Establishing a sense of stability and shared history has never been more important to parents than it is today, as families become more fractured and scattered. THE JOY OF FAMILY TRADITIONS offers more than 400 fresh ideas and creative approaches to cultivating birthday, anniversary, holiday, and other rite-of-passage and seasonal traditions that strengthen personal bonds and reflect a family's individual style, spirituality, and values.
Good Luck Life: The Essential Guide to Chinese American Celebrations and Culture
by Rosemary Gong
from Collins
Good Luck Life is the first book to explain the meanings of Chinese rituals and to offer advice on when and how to plan for Chinese holidays and special occasions such as Chinese weddings, the Red Egg and Ginger party to welcome a new baby, significant birthdays, and the inevitable funeral. Packed with practical information, Good Luck Life contains an abundance of facts, legends, foods, old-village recipes, and quick planning guides for Chinese New Year, Clear Brightness, Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn, and many other festivals.
Written with warmth and wit, Good Luck Life is beautifully designed as an easily accessible cultural guide that includes an explanation of the Lunar Calendar, tips on Chinese table etiquette for dining with confidence, and dos and don'ts from wise Auntie Lao, who recounts ancient Chinese beliefs and superstitions. This is your map for celebrating a good luck life.
Halloween: Romantic Art and Customs of Yesteryear Postcard Book
by Diane C. Arkins
from Pelican Publishing Company
On This Date : A Day-by-Day Listing of Holidays, Birthday and Historic Events, and Special Days, Weeks and Months
by Sandy Whiteley
from McGraw-Hill
An affordable new almanac from the creators of Chase's Calendar of Events
This fun, fact-filled calendar/almanac will fulfill the needs of amateur marketing mavens, freelance writers, and trivia buffs who need to know what happened On This Date. This fascinating volume is packed with entries selected from Chase's Calendar of Events, including more than 2,000 celebrity birthdays, important dates from history, fixed religious and national holidays, and special days, weeks, and months. Arranged day-by-day, from January 1 through December 31, the entries are American in emphasis and include humorous days (No Housework Day, Stay Home Because You're Well Day) and sponsored days and months (National Honey Month, Great American Smokeout) that aren't found in other day-by-day historical almanacs.
Key features include:
- More than 2,000 entries
- Contact information for event sponsors, including Web addresses
- Complete name and subject index
- Lists of movable religious and national holidays
A Halloween How-To: Costumes, Parties, Decorations, and Destinations
by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne
from Pelican Publishing Company
Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Latin American Silhouettes)
This book presents readers with scholarship on public celebrations and popular culture throughout Mexican history. Leading scholars from the Americas and Great Britain discuss aspects of Mexico's popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present. The vast range of Mexican expression is examined, including Corpus Christi celebrations, New Spain, stone murals, and folk theater. Filling a need that becomes ever more pressing, this volume provides fresh insights.
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
by Barbara Ehrenreich
from Holt Paperbacks
Drawing on a wealth of history and anthropology, Barbara Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. From the earliest orgiastic Mesopotamian rites to the medieval practice of Christianity as a “danced religion” and the transgressive freedoms of carnival, she demonstrates that mass festivities have long been central to the Western tradition. In recent centuries, this festive tradition has been repressed, cruelly and often bloodily. But as Ehrenreich argues in this original, exhilarating, and ultimately optimistic book, the celebratory impulse is too deeply ingrained in human nature ever to be completely extinguished.
Medieval Celebrations: How to Plan for Holidays, Weddings, and Reenactments With Recipes, Customs, Costumes, Decorations, Songs, Dances, and Games
by Daniel Diehl
from Stackpole Books
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