Holidays Archives - Page 5 of 22 - View from the Front Porch

20 11, 2023

Traditions at Thanksgiving

By judythemorgan|2023-11-19T12:58:16-06:00November 20th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Time for family reunions, food, fun, travel, football games, Black Friday,

and expressing thankfulness

The American celebration of the day began during the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Football games and Black Friday were not included on that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621, but the basis for our modern Thanksgiving festivities remains the same.

Families will gather to give thanks for their blessings.

Our clan will bring all the Thanksgiving feast fixings to our youngest daughter’s home where her famous brine turkey will fill the house with yummy scents.

Years ago, she started a family tradition that has become our favorite part of the day. Besides being the best turkey cooker, she’s a professional photographer and scrapbooker. Every year when we arrive at her house, she hands out cards.

On that card, we write what we are thankful for that year. She snaps a picture with her Polaroid Instant Camera which we affix to our thankful card. Before we eat, we share what we’ve written on our cards.

At the end of the day, she gathers all the cards and puts them into a yearly scrapbook. The highlight of our yearly gatherings is looking back through Thanksgiving scrapbooks from years past.

We have a lovely day filled with traditions that remind me of Tevye’s words in the song from Fiddler on the Roof.

"Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!"

Thanksgiving traditions, while lovely and touching, aren’t based on the things on the table or around the table but on the love that surrounds us.

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving filled with love.

30 10, 2023

Halloween Decorations

By judythemorgan|2023-10-12T15:37:58-05:00October 30th, 2023|Holidays, Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

Halloween yard decorations have become as popular as Christmas decorating.

Ghosts swing from trees to greet early morning walkers in neighborhoods. Jack-o-lanterns light the way in the late afternoon. Witches crashed into trees and giant spiders in spidery webs crawl on the shrubbery.

In the 1900s, Halloween wasn’t so much about zombies and gruesome headless monsters, tombstones and skeletons, or other scary, scary things like spook houses and ghost tours. Back then, crepe paper pumpkins, plastic candy containers, painted tin noisemakers, and paper lanterns were the items of choice for a happy Halloween.

Not many of these items are around today because people used them and then threw them away. Last week, I dug out what’s left of my vintage decorations.

Only a few things are still around:

Pumpkins constructed from honeycomb tissue.

A gauze mask

A paper-mache jack-o-lantern

A tin noisemaker

A couple of black cats I used for old bulletin board posters and chalk tray decorations in classrooms

Check out Kovels’ Pinterest page here to see other vintage Halloween collectibles

Do you have a future Halloween collectible among your Halloween decorations?

Antique experts predict these items might be a future collectible:

Special holiday bottles and cans with special holiday flavors like Gruesome Grape, Spooky Strawberry, and Orange Ogre. Look for other limited-edition plastic bottles with scary faces.
Plastic candy containers either reproductions of the 1950s and ’60s figures and jack-o-lanterns or contemporary plastic decorations with clever designs.
Zombies and vampires of plastic, rubber, or resin-like zombie-hand candleholders.
Charm bracelets with pumpkins, bats, and black cats; jointed skeleton earrings decorated with rhinestones and spider rings.
Motion, or voice, activated figures that light up or emit scary sounds and music. Look for pumpkin men, witches, vampires, black cats, and body parts like crawly hands.
Paper or plastic masks, costumes, treat bags, and dolls.

If you’re thinking about increasing your collection, there’ll be some good buys at reduced prices after Halloween, and don’t throw away the items you have. You might have some vintage treasures like mine one day.

16 10, 2023

Dictionary Day

By judythemorgan|2023-10-12T08:43:54-05:00October 16th, 2023|Holidays, Writer's Life, Writing Craft|1 Comment

This day honors Noah Webster, the man who fathered the American Dictionary. It’s one of my favorite holidays because I love dictionaries.

As a child, I’d spend hours poring through the pages of my grandmother’s eight-inch-thick Webster’s New International Dictionary (of the English Language). It was a fertile resource for a blossoming logophile or, as I prefer to call myself – a wordsmith.

The ancient leather-bound book with its India-skin paper had leather alphabet tabs cut into the pages. The detailed illustrations and maps are gorgeous. There were diagrams, charts, and thousands of words.

With so many dictionary resources readily available online, it’s easy to believe a hard copy isn’t necessary anymore. I disagree. Every home should have at least one realio-trulio paper dictionary available.

All sorts of wonderful magical stuff can happen when you use a hardcopy dictionary instead of looking up definitions online.

Your finger glides over other words as it scrolls down the printed page. Words that you might never have seen right there at your fingertips. You can see a word’s origin and its root without clicking to a different screen for synonyms and antonyms.

Yes, all that’s included with online dictionaries, but do you scroll down to discover the rest of the entry?

Probably not.

Understanding meaning is important. I learned that from my British antiques business partner. His British accent and my Texas drawl tended to muddle discussions and complicate purchases for the shop when the English and American definitions didn’t match. The King’s English Dictionary he gave me saved us many times over.

Spelling can be a problem no matter what type of dictionary you use. I stump spell checkers 90% of the time. Plus, spell checkers don’t give definitions.

I keep 20,000 WORDS by Louis A. Leslie side-by-side with my dictionary for fast lookup of commonly misspelled words. This little jewel gets me through my writing day.

While you may never love dictionaries as I do, I still recommend you have a hard-copy dictionary handy. You never know what you might learn.

9 10, 2023

Columbus Day – Indigenous People’s Day

By judythemorgan|2023-10-07T08:26:40-05:00October 9th, 2023|Holidays|0 Comments

Which day do you celebrate?

The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus believed he’d reached East Asia when he sighted Cuba and thought it was China. When the expedition landed on Hispaniola, he thought he’d found Japan.

Columbus’s discovery introduced Europeans to the New World, which led to cultural exchange, commerce, and exploration, and eventually to the discovery of the real westward route to the Indies.

His accomplishment has been celebrated as Columbus Day since the 18th century and became a U.S. federal holiday in 1937.

But Columbus Day and the man who inspired it also generated controversy.

Many argue that Europeans got land, slaves, and gold, while the natives were dispossessed, enslaved, and infected the indigenous people in the lands they claimed.

Protests of Columbus Day celebrations resulted in the creation of Indigenous People’s Day in the 1990s, but that did not solve the controversy. Only twenty states have adopted the new Indigenous People’s Day as a holiday. The other states ignore the designation and have various other celebrations on the day.

Italian Americans honor their heritage, not Christopher Columbus. Various Oklahoma tribal governments designate the day as Native American Day, naming it after their tribe.

Whatever you choose to call the day or celebrate, I will always think about the three ships Columbus sailed, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, and remember the jingle I learned in school.

Christopher Columbus sailed in the ocean blue in 1492.

Turns out the jingle comes from a poem by Winifred Sackville Stoner, who was known for poems, rhymes, and mnemonic jingles to aid in the recollection of information.

The poem “The History of The U.S.” is found in Yankee Doodles: A Book of American Verse, edited by Ted Malone and published in 1943 by Whittlesey House (NY and London). You can read the entire poem here. It’s quite long and covers American history through WWI.

Today, I’m celebrating that my teachers never made me recite Stoner’s entire poem.

11 09, 2023

9-11 and Memory Triggers

By judythemorgan|2023-09-07T10:22:35-05:00September 11th, 2023|Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

Triggers are sensory reminders that can cause memories –painful or happy – to resurface. Triggers can be anything from a holiday to a perfume scent to a loud voice.

Years after certain events, whether we were part of an event or not, anniversaries of events can trigger feelings.

Dates like these:

December 7, 1941	Pearl Harbor
November 25, 1963	John F. Kennedy Assassination
August 22, 1966	The University of Texas Tower Shootings
April 04, 1968	MLK Assassination
January 28, 1986	Challenger Explosion
November 9, 1989	Fall of Berlin Wall
August 31, 1997	Princess Di dies in a car accident
April 20, 1999	Columbine High School CO shootings

And, of course, September 11, 2001

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Today we remember and honor those who died on that day and during the aftermath.

Memories may trigger for you as this day does for me. My husband worked in New York City for many years. Our photo albums are filled with pictures of the Twin Towers from our many trips to the city.

None of our before pictures can erase the scenes from what happened on September 11, 2001, or my fears that day. I couldn’t turn off the TV as the horrors unfolded.

If today triggers memories for you, too. Let’s remember this quote:

4 09, 2023

Celebrating Labor Day

By judythemorgan|2023-09-02T09:48:26-05:00September 4th, 2023|Holidays, Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Happy Labor Day!

Unlike most U.S. holidays, Labor Day is a strange celebration without rituals, well, except for shopping and barbecuing.

Peter J. McGuire, United Brotherhood of Carpenters founder, and Matthew Maguire, secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York, are considered founders of the U.S. Labor Day.

Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal in 1882 and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic. Workers agreed and staged a strike to get a day off work on the first Monday in September.

Twelve years later, in 1894, Labor Day became an official federal holiday though the bill did not give everyone a holiday. Only federal employees were authorized the day off by the law.

Over the years, emphasis changed from protests and demands and Labor Day shifted to honoring the labor movement and the social and economic achievements of all American workers.

Though the holiday has no rituals, addresses by union officials, industrialists, government officials, and others do receive coverage in social media, newspapers, and television.

Labor Day mostly signifies a three-day weekend filled with retail sales, an extra day away from work, and the unofficial end of summer.

Unless you work in retail then you’ll have some long working hours. Police, firefighters, nurses, and doctors will also experience heavy workloads because Labor Day is the second most dangerous holiday to drive on U.S. highways.

I’ll not be driving. I’ll be following Douglas Pagels’ advice.

“Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.”

Why not join me? Relax, grab one last hot dog, and slide down your rainbow beam.

3 07, 2023

A Couple of my Favorite 4th of July Things

By judythemorgan|2023-07-02T15:02:17-05:00July 3rd, 2023|Holidays|1 Comment

My first favorite thing is this family photo.

My very talented photographer daughter snapped the shot years ago when her two boys were young. You may have seen the image on a highway billboard or in an airport or a store ad.

Her boys running freely on the park path reminds me of the many freedoms we have in this country that are not granted in so many other places in the world.

Second, this very old Chevy commercial with its catchy tune. I don’t drive a Chevy, but I do love this song and think about the great country we live in every time I hear it.

Now flag Old Glory this 4th and hum the Chevy song while grilling a nice, juicy burger to celebrate America’s 247th birthday.

19 06, 2023

What is Juneteenth?

By judythemorgan|2023-06-17T18:17:20-05:00June 19th, 2023|Holidays, Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Today marks the third time Juneteenth will be observed nationally as a federal holiday.

Also known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Black Independence Day the date marks the day enslaved people in the United States learned they were free.

In case you’re wondering where the name comes from, it’s a blending of June and nineteenth.

Growing up in Texas, there were always celebrations on Juneteenth. According to Para LaNell Agboga, museum site coordinator at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center in Austin, Texas early celebrations revolved around the church with speeches and picnics.

As Black Texans moved away from Texas, the observances slowly spread.

But I must confess that as our family moved around the United States, I met many who had never heard of Juneteenth.

Or Laura Smalley, a freed slave from a plantation very near where I live now. Or, her story about how her former master went off to fight in the Civil War, and when he came home he never told his slaves what had happened.

“Old master didn’t tell, you know, they was free. I think now they say they worked them, six months after that. Six months. And turn them loose on the 19th of June. That’s why, you know, we celebrate that day.” Smalley’s 1941 interview can still be found on YouTube.

Juneteenth officially began June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his Union troops delivered General Order No. 3, to the residents of Galveston, Texas. The order said:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”

The next year, 1866, the now-freed slaves started celebrating, and the celebration has continued ever since.

One hundred and fifty-five years later in 2021, President Biden signed a bill designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Another 96-year-old Texan, Opal Lee is credited with successfully championing that legislation.

The Proclamation states clearly why we should celebrate the day:

“As we observe Juneteenth, we remind ourselves of the sacred proposition rooted in Scripture and enshrined in our Declaration of Independence: that we are all created equal in the image of God and each of us deserves to be treated equally throughout our lives. That is the promise of America that every generation is charged to keep alive. While the opposition may seem fierce and the fire of conflict may be intense, the story of Juneteenth reveals that freedom, justice, and equality will always prevail.”

Today’s celebrations will include parades, concerts, and reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Like most holidays, Juneteenth is seeing its fair share of commercialism.

Supporters work hard to make sure Juneteenth celebrators don’t forget why. Check here for events offered through JuneteenthFTW.

12 06, 2023

Father’s Day

By judythemorgan|2023-06-11T10:17:00-05:00June 12th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

We will honor our father figures the third weekend of June. For some that father figure might be a birth father. For others, it’s a stepfather or a relative or friend that serves the father’s role.

Me, I’ve been blessed with three men who share their father’s love with me.

My father.

Daddy taught me how to fish, how to hunt, and how to dress out my bounty. He taught me how to build things, fix things, grow things, and cook things around a campfire. He taught me raunchy songs and words, then reminded me to always be a lady.

My beloved uncle—a Marine on Iwo Jimo when I was born—was a second father to me.

Uncle Dub taught me to shoot straight, with a firearm and with my words. He taught me the fun of antique auctions and the beauty of old things. He showed unconditional love in through my tough times and tough love when needed. He was a wise counselor.

I inherited my third father when I married his only son.

Rev. L. O., my preacher father-in-love shared his Bible wisdom and whetted my appetite for Bible study. And, best of all he raised his only son to be the best husband ever and a godly father.

I’m so thankful for having his son by my side as we raised our three children and now love and enjoy eleven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He’s been a vital force in all their lives.

My three daddies are gone now, which makes Father’s Day a bit sad for me.

I miss them but remembering all of them on their special day brings back fond memories and makes me smile.

10 04, 2023

Why Wear Easter Bonnets?

By judythemorgan|2023-04-08T15:42:49-05:00April 10th, 2023|Holidays|0 Comments

I saw no Easter bonnets at my church on Easter Sunday. I wasn’t surprised. The tradition of wearing any hat much less Easter bonnets seems to have all but disappeared in today’s culture.

Once upon a time, it was very important to have not only a new bonnet but a new outfit for Easter Sunday too. I’m guessing many of us have pictures like this buried in old photo albums.

The practice of new finery for Easter Sunday originated in the early church. Converts wore white garments on Sunday to identify themselves with Christ. The white symbolized purity and newness of life and became a powerful and tangible way to signify the life-altering spiritual transformation that had taken place.

In the 19^th Century, there was even an Easter parade in New York City from St. Patrick’s Cathedral down Fifth Avenue. An after-church cultural event primarily for the well-to-do who decked out in new and fashionable clothing, and strolled from their own church to others to see and be seen.

The official parade’s popularity declined significantly as people came to view the frolic in finery as an ostentatious display of wealth and beauty.

Irving Berlin’s 1948 song “In Your Easter Bonnet” from the movie Easter Parade renewed the popularity of wearing an Easter bonnet. That’s why so many of us have pictures like the one above of me, my sister, and my brother posed outside my grandmother’s house on an Easter Sunday morning after church.

Although the parade falderal of bygone days is no longer, you might see some Easter parade strollers if you’re in New York City some Easter Sunday.

Check out these fabulous Easter bonnets from the 2018 New York Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Avenue, Manhattan near St.Patrick’s Cathedral.