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Festival
of the Anthesteria,
ancient Greece (End of February)
 Festival of Flowers
(Held during the full moon following the full
moon of the Lęnaia,
and two moons following the full moon nearest the winter solstice.)
Today was the first day of the three-day Anthesteria, a
floral festival of ancient Greece dedicated to Dionysus,
the god of wine and ecstasy. The last year's vintage was tasted
amid the celebrations for the god who taught mankind how to make
wine. The object of the festival was to celebrate the maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage, and the beginning of Spring.
Dionysus was
commemorated by devotees who sometimes went to the extremes of long
dance sessions to the point of exhaustion, sometimes even tearing
apart wild beasts in their frenzy. Dionysus, who equates with the
Roman Bacchus, took long journeys throughout the world to teach
mankind the winemaker's art.
Dionysus is
probably the Greek version of the Vedic god Soma, judging by
similarities of their function and legends. He was originally solely
a god of wine, later of vegetation and warm moisture, then some kind
of supreme god. At first he was depicted as a bearded man, then
later as a rather effeminate beardless youth.
The discoverer of the winemaker's art was stricken
by Hera with madness, and went on a long journey to Dodona to
consult the oracle there for a cure. On the way, he had to cross a
marsh and mounted a donkey to do so. He rewarded the beast with the
power of speech.
"On the first day, called Pithoigia
(opening of the casks), libations were offered from the newly
opened casks to the god of wine, all the household, including
servants and slaves, joining in the festivities. The rooms and the
drinking vessels in them were adorned with spring flowers, as were
also the children over three years of age.
"The second day, named Choes (feast of beakers),
was a time of merrymaking. The people dressed themselves gaily,
some in the disguise of the mythical personages in the suite of
Dionysus, and paid a round of visits to their acquaintances.
Drinking clubs met to drink off matches, the winner being he who
drained his cup most rapidly. Others poured libations on the tombs
of deceased relatives. On the part of the state this day was the
occasion of a peculiarly solemn and secret ceremony in one of the
sanctuaries of Dionysus in the Lenaeum, which for the rest of the
year was closed. The basilissa (or basilinna), wife of the archon
basileus for the time, went through a ceremony of marriage to the
wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons,
called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy.
"In ancient Greece,
Anthesteria
was the name of a festival during which the participants ritually
expelled the Keres, evil female spirits, from their houses."
Source: Wikipedia
Festivals in ancient Greece
Runic half-month of Tyr commences
This is
a time of positive regulation, sacrifice and hard work in order to
progress.
Egyptian
day (dies egypticus, dies ćgypticus or dies
mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding
I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)
 Festival
of the Equiria, ancient
Rome
Horse races were held in honour of the god of war, Mars,
at the Campus Martius (the field of Mars). Romulus instituted this
tradition to herald the beginning of the sacral year. Purification
rites were held for the army, which must have taken a lot of energy
and time.
This
is the first Equiria (or Equirria), with a second held on March 14.
Romans walked around the city boundaries in solemn procession and
then gave sacrifice, followed by a public feast. If
the Campus Martius was overflowed by the Tiber, the races took place
on a part of the Mons Coelius, which was called from that
circumstance the
Campus
Martialis.
Four racing factions were popular in Rome – the blues, greens, whites and reds, the
colours worn by the charioteers who often became the wealthy sports superstars of their day. Portrayals of them in sculpture, mosaics and moulded glassware have survived, sometimes with their names.
There was also a festival on October
15 (idus),
in which the right hand horse of the winning pair of a race was
sacrificed to Mars. The tail was rushed to the regia
to have its blood drip on the hearth there. There was a traditional
fight over its head between the inhabitants of the Subura who
wanted it for the Turris Mamilia, and those of the Via
Sacria who wanted it for the regia.
Roman
festivals and notable days in the Book of Days
Feast
day of St Alnoth, of England, martyr
Bailiff to St Wereburge, he became an anchoret, and was killed by
robbers; his relics are kept at Stow, near
Weldon,
Northamptonshire,
England.
Feast day of St Anne Line
Feast day of St Augustus
Chapdelaine
Feast day of St Baldomerus
Feast day of St Emmanuel of
Cremona
Feast day of Blessed Gabriel of
Our Lady of Sorrows (Gabriel Possenti)
Born on March
1, 1838, Gabriel Possenti was the 11th child of 13
children of an Italian lawyer. He was a bon vivant and flamboyant
ladies' man, even somewhat vain.
Falling
ill, he swore to take up a religious life if restored to health. He
did not keep this vow on becoming well, and it took another bout of
illness for him to ask to join the Jesuits. He was tempted by the
world, but when his sister died in a cholera epidemic he fulfilled
his vow.
He was
known for his piety, prayerfulness and care for the poor. No penance
was too much for him. He died of tuberculosis. The cult of St
Gabriel is especially popular amongst Italian youth and Italian
migrants have spread the cult to areas such as the USA,
Central
America and South
America.
Feast day of St Roger
Filcock
Feast
day of St Galmier, of Lyon
A locksmith at Lyon, he gave his all to the poor. His relics worked
miracles, till the Huguenots destroyed them in the 16th
Century.
As a mark of God's special
favour, wild birds would eat from his hand. Patron of locksmiths, he
is represented in art with pincers and other tools of his trade.
Feast day of St Honorina
Feast day of St John of
Gorze
Feast day of Ss Julian,
Chronion, and Besas,
martyrs
Feast day of St Leander
of Seville (Leander, bishop of Seville)
(Lungwort, Pulmonaria officinalis, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Called the Apostle of the Visigoths, whose efforts converted from
the heresy of Arianism the Western Goths or
Visigoths, who had ruled
Spain for centuries, Leander was born in the
6th Century to a
noble family in
Cartagena
and was brother to St
Fulgentius
of Écija, St
Florentina
and St
Isidore of
Seville.
He entered the religious life and became
Archbishop of Seville. In 583, St Leander went to
Constantinople as
an ambassador of the Catholic Church to the Emperor, and there he
bacame firm friends with St
Gregory the Great. He died in 596 and
his relics are now in a chapel in Seville Cathedral. In art, he is
sometimes represented with a flaming heart in his hand as a symbol
of his zeal for the conversion of the Visigoths.
Feast day of St Maria
Caridad Brader
Feast day of St Mark
Barkworth
Feast
day of St Thalelaeus (Thalilaeus)
A 'weeper' in Syria. A native of
Cilicia, he died c. 450 CE.
He lived as a hermit on a mountain for sixty years and wept almost
non-stop. He lived for ten years in a wooden cage that was so small
his chin rested on his knees. Perhaps this accounts for his
lachrymosity. Asked the reason for the cage, he replied, "I punish
my criminal body that God, seeing my affliction for my sins, may be
moved to forgive them and deliver me from the torments of the world
to come, or at least to mitigate their severity." He spent sixty
years as an ascetic, weeping almost without intermission.
Alban Butler
(Lives of the Saints) tells us that his hut was beside a heathen
shrine near Gibala, to which the pagans used to sacrifice to devils.
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Time of the Old Woman,
Morocco (Feb 25 - Mar 4)
Powamu,
Pueblo/Hopi purification ceremony, (Feb 12 - 28)
Sounkyo
Ice Festival, Sounkyo Onsen (spa),
Hokkaido,
Japan (Jan 29 - Mar 5)
Ayyám-i-Há (Intercalary
Days in the
Bahá'í
calendar), Bahá'í Faith (Feb 25 - Mar 1)
Street Urchins'
Carnival,
Denmark
Statehood Day,
St Kitts
and Nevis
St Kitts and Nevis is part of the West Indies Associated States.
Today celebrates the achievement of self-government through
agreements with Great Britain on February 27, 1967
Threepenny Day,
Eton College,
England
On the death of Provost Bost in
1504, it was found in his will that the Etonian administrator had
left a sum of money that, if wisely invested, was earmarked to
provide two pennies per year for each 'colleger' or boarding
boy. The money was to ensure they got enough to eat, for in those
days, tuppence would buy half a sheep. Provost Lupton, his
successor, added to the bequest in his own will, and the legacy
became threepence for each lad. Every February 27, the students
gather in College Hall for the Threepenny Ceremony. Each boy in turn
plucks his coin from the crown of a top hat. In exchange, each boy
must recite a prayer for Bost's soul.
Anneli Rufus, The
World Holiday Book: Celebrations for every day of the year, Harper
San Francisco, 1994
National Day, Dominican Republic
Public holiday with parades
and political meetings. Independence was secured when the Haitians
withdrew in 1844.
274 CE Constantine
I (Constantine the Great), first Christian emperor of
Rome, born
at Naissus,
(today's Niš, Serbia) in Upper Moesia. His feast day is May 21 and
that of his mother Helena, finder of the True Cross, August 18.
1691
Edward Cave
(d.
January 10,
1754),
English printer, editor and publisher. In
The Gentleman's Magazine, he created
the first general-interest 'magazine'
in the modern sense.
1807 Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (d. 1882), American poet ('The Song of
Hiawatha')
'Daylight and Moonlight'
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.
In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.
But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.
Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.
And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.
1847
Ellen Terry, English stage actress
1848 Sir
Hubert
Parry, English
composer
1850
Henry Edwards
Huntington,
American railroad executive and philanthropist
1861 Rudolf Steiner (d. 1925)
Austrian philosopher, founder of anthroposophy
Rudolph Steiner
Archives
Steiner's
medicine: a skeptical view
1881
Sveinn Björnsson, first president of Iceland
1886 Hugo
Black (d. 1971), associate justice of the United
States Supreme Court1888 Lotte Lehmann
(d. 1976),
singer 1890 Freddie Keppard
(d. 1933),
jazz
musician 1891 David Sarnoff
(d. December
12, 1971),
American broadcasting pioneer, General Manager of Radio
Corporation of America (RCA) from its founding in 1919 to
his retirement in 1970.
On April 14, 1912, a 21-year-old telegraph operator in New York picked up the message from SS
Olympic through the static: "SS Titanic ran into iceberg. Sinking fast". He sat for hours taking down whatever information he could, communicating it to the anxiously waiting world, until he collapsed, exhausted.
The young man was David Sarnoff.
1891 Anne
Samson (d. 2004), oldest-known Canadian
2002 -
'04, and oldest nun on
record 2003 - '041892 William
Demarest (d. 1983), actor (TV series:
My Three Sons) 1897 Marian Anderson
(d. 1993),
African-American singer, banned by
Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR). When the DAR refused to let her use
Constitution
Hall, Anderson sang before 75,000 people at the
Lincoln Memorial on
Easter Sunday, 1939. Some historians cite this as the first strategic
victory of the modern civil rights movement. The DAR later managed
to prevent Joan Baez from performing at Constitution Hall.
1899 Charles Best (d. 1978)
medical scientist, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin for the
treatment of diabetes 1902 John Steinbeck (d. 1968), American writer, winner of
the Nobel Prize in literature 1962, (The Grapes of Wrath;
East of Eden)
1903
Grethe
Weiser (d. 1970), actress1905 Franchot Tone
(d. September 18, 1968), American actor
(Bombshell;
Mutiny on the
Bounty;
Dangerous) 1907 Mildred Bailey
(d. 1951),
jazz
performer 1910
Peter de Vries, American comic novelist
1910 Joan Bennett
(d. 1990),
actress1912 Lawrence Durrell (d.
November 7, 1990),
British novelist (The Alexandria Quartet),
poet, dramatist, and travel writer
1913 Irwin
Shaw, (d. 1984) writer1917 John Connally (d. 1993),
Governor of Texas 1918 William
Jefferson Blythe III (d. 1946), father of US President Bill Clinton
1923 Dexter Gordon (d. 1990),
jazz saxophone
player
My
Sharon-uh
1928
Ariel
Sharon, former Prime
Minister of Israel. During the 1982
Lebanon War, while Ariel Sharon was
Defence
Minister, the Sabra
and Shatila massacre took place, in which between 460 and 3,500
Palestinian civilians in the refugee
camps were killed by the Phalanges
– Lebanese Maronite Christian militias. The Security Chief of the
Phalange militia, a Lebanese himself, Elie
Hobeika, was the ground commander of the militiamen who entered
the Palestinian camps and killed the Palestinians. The Phalange had
been sent into the camps to clear out PLO
fighters, and Israeli forces had been sent to the camps at Sharon's
command to provide them with logistical
support and to guard camp exits. The incident led some of Sharon's
critics to refer to him as "the Butcher of Beirut".
On September
28, 2000, his
provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque,
a holy shrine of Islam, launched a new round of continuing conflict
in Israel and Palestine. From about 2004, he began to
face opposition in his Likud
party for such plans as unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip.
Other detractors have publicly distrusted Sharon's motives for
this plan, and their suspicions were further roused when top Sharon
aide Dov Weisglass was quoted in Haaretz
on October
6, 2004, as saying the purpose of disengagement was to destroy
Palestinian aspirations for a state for years to come. This incident
has bolstered the position of critics that Sharon is intentionally
trying to destroy the Peace Process, an accusation refuted by the
Prime Minister's camp. See Israel's
unilateral disengagement plan of 2004.
On
January 4,
2006, following a
massive stroke,
Sharon lapsed into a coma. On
November 6,
2006,
it was reported that Sharon had been moved out of an intensive care
unit after treatment for a heart infection. Source:
Wikpedia
Biography
at Jewish Virtual Library BBC
profile www.indictsharon.net/
1928
Alfred
Hrdlicka, sculptor and graphic artist
1930 Joanne Woodward,
London-born American actress (Oscar:
The Three Faces of Eve) 1930 Peter
Stone, writer
1932 Elizabeth
Taylor, American actress, a leading child star by the age of 12
after her performance in MGM's
National Velvet. (Cleopatra;
Oscars: BUtterfield
8;
Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?)
1934 Ralph
Nader, American consumer rights campaigner and author
 Ralph Nader: hero or villain?
Ralph Nader has his fan club, eg http://www.nader.org
…
"In 1963, Ralph Nader, then an unknown twenty-nine-year old
attorney, abandoned a conventional law practice in Hartford,
Connecticut, and hitchhiked to Washington, DC, to begin a long
odyssey of professional citizenship …"
…
and his detractors:
"Saint Ralph loves to preach about democracy and 'citizen
power', but he runs his carefully concealed empire with an iron
grip. Of 19 groups associated with Nader, the most powerful and
important groups are all directly controlled by Nader or
completely under his influence and no one else's. With some
groups, Nader is the only contributor; others are controlled by
his sister, Laura Nader Milleron, or his cousin. …"
Source
Infatuation is when you think he's
as sexy as Robert Redford,
as smart as
Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny
as Woody
Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is
when you
realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as
Jimmy
Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry
Kissinger
and nothing like Robert Redford – but you'll take him
anyway.
Judith Viorst
An Unreasonable Man
1935 Mirella Freni,
Italian soprano
1941 Paddy Ashdown,
British politician
1943 Morten
Lauridsen, composer
1947 Gidon Kremer,
Latvian violinist
1957 Adrian Smith,
musician (Iron Maiden)
1971 Derren Brown,
psychological illusionist
1973
Peter André,
English-born Australian pop singer
1980 Chelsea Clinton,
daughter of former U.S.
President Bill Clinton
1981 Josh
Groban, American singer
Phew!!
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