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For all my Yule needs
Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret
Read MacDonald
Golden Bough
Folklore classic
Yule
Decking the Halls
Folklore &
traditions of Christmas plants
The Winter Solstice
The Fires of Yule
A Keltelven Guide for
Celebrating the Winter Solstice
Sabbat Entertaining
The Pagan Book of Days
Eight Sabbats for Witches
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
Be A Goddess
The Wiggles - Yule Be Wiggling
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Lord of the Rings
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The Permaculture Home Garden
By Linda Woodrow
The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD
A
Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy
Remotely
Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About
It
What
Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom
Hartmann
How
Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World
Pagan
Christianity
Songs in the Key of W
For
God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The Price of Loyalty
The
Torture Debate in America
The
Culture of the New Capitalism
The God Who Wasn't There
A
Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy
When Corporations Rule the World
Alternatives to Economic Globalization
Feminism Without Borders
Commercialization of Intimate Life
By Arlie Russell Hochschild
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Robinson Crusoe
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer,
Naturalist, and Buccaneer : The Life of William Dampier
Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange
Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
365 Goddess
Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
Body Wisdom
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Halcyon
Days, ancient Greece and Rome (Dec 14 - 28)
The seven days preceding and
the seven following the shortest day (Northern Hemisphere) were
called by the ancients the Halcyon
Days. The halcyon bird (kingfisher – its name comes from the
Greek meaning 'sea conceiver'), was believed to lay its eggs on
the sea, at the time that it was calm. This was thus considered the
best time for mariners, and from this belief we obtain today's
expression 'the halcyon days', meaning the best days in one's
life
Alcyone is
also the name of a star in the constellation Pleiades; the early
Arabs called it Al Jauz,
the Walnut.
Read more on the Halcyon Days
Saturnalia (Dec 17 - 23),
Roman Empire.
Third Day:
Opiconsivia
(Opalia)
Held in
honour of the goddess Ops
Originally a Sabine goddess, Ops
('plenty') was a fertility deity and earth-goddess in
Roman mythology. Her husband
was Saturn.
On August
25, the Opiconsivia (or Opeconsiva or Opalia)
Roman
festival was held in honor of Ops.
Opiconsivia was also a surname of Ops herself. And this name was
also given to December
19, on which day the
Opalia
were celebrated, also in her honor (some mention also August 10
and December 9). The Latin word consivia (or consiva)
derives from conserere ('to sow'). Hence, the
word Opiconsivia may be interpreted as meaning "the sowing of
crops", since Ops ultimately means 'crops' in the
sense of 'riches, goods'. This word is also related to Consus,
the male counterpart of Ops as "the seeder".
Both Ops and Consus were deemed chthonic
(underworld) deities which made the vegetation grow. Since her
abode was inside the earth, Ops was invoked by her worshippers
while sitting, with their hands touching the ground, according to
Macrobius (Saturnalia, I:10). Consus seems to be an alias of
Saturn in the chthonic aspect, since he is also held to be the
husband of Ops. Ops, the Earth Mother, was also considered the
Great Mother of the Gods. As such, Ops is an alias of Rhea, Cybele,
Demeter, and so on, impersonating the earth as the giver of
riches ...
Reference:
HH Scullard,
Festivals
and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1981), 177-8, 181, 205, 207.
Alternative:
Opis
Source: Wikipedia
* Which date, December 9 (Wikipedia), or December 19 (sources vary)?
William Smith
says December
19:
"OPA´LIA,
a Roman festival in honour of Opis,which was
celebrated on the 14th day before the Calends of January (Dec.
19th), being the third day of the Saturnalia,
which was also originally celebrated on the same day, when only one
day was devoted to the latter festival. It was believed that Opis
was the wife of Saturnus, and for this reason the festivals were
celebrated at the same time (Macrob. Sat. i.10; Varr. de Ling. Lat. vi.22, ed. Müller;
Festus, s.v. Opalia). The worshippers of Opis paid their
vows sitting, and touched the earth on purpose, of which she was the
goddess (Macrob. l.c.)."
As does Roman Religion
and Mythology:
"Ops was an ancient god of the Sabines, from where
she passed to the Romans. She was associated with
Saturn, and often identified with the Greek goddess
Rhea. The goddess
Juno was sometimes associated with Ops as Juno
Opigena.
"As
Ops Consiva, Ops the Sower, she protected the sowing of
crops. She was also called
Ops Opifera, the
bringer of help.
"Ops had an ancient sanctuary in the
Regia in
the
Forum Romanum,
and there was a Temple of Ops on the
Capitoline Hill.
"She was
celebrated at the
Opalia on December
19, and at the
Opiconsivia on August
25."
As does Biblioteca
Arcana:
"Consualia
and Opalia (Rom., Dec. 15 and 19; ancient: XVIII and XIV Kal. Jan.)
"These
festivals are essentially the same as the summer
Consualia
and Opiconsivia (Aug. 21 and 25, q.v.). We see here a pattern: a
festival for Consus (God of the Storage-bin) followed in four days
by a festival for Ops (Goddess of Plenty). Between these, there was,
in the summer on Aug. 23, another festival for Ops (the wife of
Saturn) corresponding to the Saturnalia on Dec. 17. [SFR 177-81,
205]."
And also
Roman
Calendar:
"This day is sacred to Ops (Cybele
or Rhea), the mother goddess. She was the wife of Cronus and the
mother of Zeus. her priests were called the Corybantes."
Ursids meteor shower (Dec
17 - 26)
Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25),
season of the coming of
Jesus Christ
Feast day of St
Anastasius I,
Pope
Feast day of St
Augustine Moi Van Nguyen
Feast day of St Bernard
Paleara
Feast day of St Darius
Feast day of St Dominic
Uy Van Bui
Feast day of St Francis
Man
Feast day of St Nemesius
of Alexandria, burned alive in 307 in Alexandria, Egypt
Feast day of St Paul
(not the Apostle; martyred at Nicaea, Turkey)
Feast day of St Ribert
of Saint-Oyend
Feast day of St
Samthana, virgin and abbess of
Meath,
Ireland
Two-coloured heath,
Erica
bicolor, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint. Meath is the
county in which is found
Brú na Bóinne,
a complex of Neolithic chamber tombs, standing stones, henges and
other prehistoric enclosures. Brú na Bóinne's
Newgrange, the palaeolithic passage
tomb, has a Winter Solstice phenomenon of the sunlight
entering. See December 22.
Feast day of St
Secundus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Las
Posadas, Mexico (Dec
16 -
25)
National Unity Day, USA
Declared in 1979
by President Jimmy
Carter in remembrance of the American
hostages being held in Tehran, Iran.
1683 King Philip V of
Spain
1699 William Bowyer,
printer
1764
William
Cox (d.
March 15, 1837),
English-born
Australian
soldier, explorer, pioneer and road builder whose road over the
Blue
Mountains, between
Sydney and
Bathurst, was completed on
January 21,
1815.
The completed dirt track
was 3.7 m
wide and 163 km
long. As a reward, Cox was awarded
2,000 acres
(8.1 km˛) of land near Bathurst.
1779 Auguste-Gaspard-Louis Desnoyers, French
engraver
1790 Captain
William Edward Parry
(d. July 8
or 9,
1855),
English
rear-admiral and
Arctic
explorer
1813 Thomas
Andrews (d. 1885), chemist 1820
Mary
Livermore (Mary Ashton Livermore; d.
May 23, 1905),
American
journalist,
spiritualist,
suffragist,
women's rights
activist, colleague of suffragists
Lucy Stone
and Julia
Ward Howe
A world chronology of women's suffrage
US chronology
Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragette
1861
Constance
Garnett (née Black; d. December
17, 1946), English translator whose translations of
19th-Century
Russian
classics first introduced them on a wide basis to the English
public. Garnett was the first English translator of Dostoevsky
and Chekhov.
In 1893,
shortly after a visit to Moscow
and Petersburg
during which she met Leo
Tolstoy, she started translating Russian
literature, which became her life passion and resulted in
English-language versions of dozens of volumes by Tolstoy, Gogol,
Goncharov,
Dostoevsky, Pushkin,
Turgenev,
Ostrovsky
and Chekhov.
Her husband, Edward
Garnett, was a distinguished reader for the publisher
Jonathan
Cape and a noted supporter
of
Henry Lawson
(1867
- 1922)
when the Australian poet was in London in
1900
- '02. Her son, David
Garnett, trained as a biologist and later wrote novels.
Works
by Constance Garnett
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
1865
Minnie
Maddern Fiske (d. 1932), actress of Broadway fame1885 Joe King Oliver
(d. 1938),
jazz
musician 1888 Fritz Reiner
(d. 1963),
Hungarian conductor 1900
Géza von
Cziffra (d. 1989),
Hungarian and
Austrian film
director and screenwriter 1901 Rudolf
Hell (d. 2002), inventor 1902
Sir Ralph Richardson
(d. October
10, 1983), British
actor of stage and screen
1906 Leonid Brezhnev (d. 1982), chairman of the
Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet (president) of the Soviet Union
from 1960 -
64 and
1977 -
82. In 1964 he succeeded
Nikita Khrushchev as
first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
1910 Jean
Genet (d. 1986), novelist (Our Lady of the Flowers;
The Thief's Journal)
1915 Edith
Piaf (d. 1963), singer, actress 1916 Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann, political scientist
1918 Professor
Longhair (Henry
Roeland Byrd) (d.
January 30, 1980), legendary New Orleans, USA blues musician.
His signature song,
'Mardi Gras in New Orleans' (still
the theme song of the Mardi Gras) was recorded in 1949 under the name Professor Longhair and the Shuffling
Hungarians. "I had one Hindu in the band, but
there weren't no Hungarians," he explained.
1920
David
Susskind (d. 1987),
American movie, stage and television producer1923
Gordon Jackson (d. 1990),
film, stage & TV actor best known as 'Hudson' on
Upstairs,
Downstairs 1925 Tankred Dorst,
dramatist
1933 Cicely Tyson,
American actress 1935 Bobby Timmons
(d. 1974),
jazz pianist
1940
Phil Ochs (d. April 9, 1976), American protest singer of the early
1960s, perhaps best known
for his songs 'Power and Glory', 'There But for Fortune',
'Changes', 'When I'm Gone', and 'I Ain't Marching
Anymore'. Ochs was a passionate vocalist who wrote poignant lyrics
about war, civil
rights, labor
struggles and other topics.
Intensely disappointed by his lack of commercial
success, however, and haunted by other personal demons – namely
alcoholism, writer's block and depression – Phil Ochs hanged
himself in 1976. His songs have been
covered
by Joan Baez,
Billy
Bragg, Ani DiFranco, John Wesley Harding and They Might Be Giants, among many
others.
"In
the summer of 1975, a bizarre alter ego he called John Butler
Train replaced the artist formerly known as Phil Ochs. Like a
monstrous Mr. Hyde to Phil Ochs' Dr. Jekyll, John Train rampaged
across both the east and west coasts, leaving a trail of mayhem
and damaged friendships in his wake. Though suicidal at times, to
this point Phil could not yet bring himself to finish the deed.
Instead, he had John Train do it for him. As Train, he insisted
that he had murdered Phil Ochs, saying in an interview, 'The
reason I killed him was he was some kind of genius but he drank
too much and was becoming a boring old fart. For the good of
societies, public and secret, he needed to be gotten rid of.'
"Biographer
Michael Schumacher explains the 'death' of Phil Ochs this way,
'Becoming a martyr at the hands of John Train assured Phil of
the status of having a heroic figure in the minds of the
"public" society that admired his activism, and ended his
harassment by the "private" societies (i.e., the FBI, CIA,
Mafia, etc.) that wanted him silenced.' As John Train, Phil's
drinking was out of control, he was abusive to strangers and
friends alike, and as the delusion progressed he became a danger
to himself and others. He had numerous scrapes with the law, and
with each arrest his brother Michael hoped Phil would be placed
under psychiatric care, but each time a contrite John Train
would get the charges dropped. Friends pleaded with him to get
professional help, but their pleas were always ignored. Finally,
come the Fall, after being passed over to participate in Bob
Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review tour, John Train realized that he
was a failure, just as Phil Ochs had been. As quickly as he had
appeared, John Train was gone, leaving behind only the shell of
the man who used to be Phil Ochs." Source
"His
music didn't sell. He is most famous for songs protesting a war
everyone wants to forget. A folk singer, a 'protest' singer, a
freedom rider, a suicide. His boyish voice challenged the history of
his time, or tried to."
Source:
The Daily Bleed
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1941
Maurice
White, musician
1944 Richard Leakey,
anthropologist1944
Alvin Lee,
musician 1946 Robert Urich
(d. 2002),
actor
1960 Mike Lookinland,
actor
(The Brady Bunch)
1972 Alyssa Milano,
actress 1980 Jake Gyllenhaal,
actor (The Day
After Tomorrow) 1980 Marla Sokoloff,
actress (Full House, The Practice) Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
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reetings from Australia.
How it works
Hebe is
the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Legend has it that she was born not
of sexual union, but otherwise: when Hera, having been invited to dinner
by Apollo,
ate from the head of a wild lettuce, she fell pregnant.
