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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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Glory to God for all things. Amen. I gave strict order that the natives should not be
offended, or molested on any account, and advised that wherever they
were met with, they were to be treated with every mark of friendship.
In case of their stealing anything, mild means were to be used to
recover it, but on no account to fire at them with ball or shot. Consider your origins: you were not made to live as
brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who,
in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality. |
Up-Helly-Aa |
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi
ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era
smarrita.
(In the middle of
our life's walk
I found myself in a dark
wood
for
the straight road was lost)
Dante Alighieri,
La
Divina Commedia
The Jews who have arrived would nearly all
like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury
and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the
inferior magistrates, as also to the people having the most affection
for you; the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence
they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the
benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general,
deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart, praying
also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the
general community of your worships, that the deceitful race—such hateful
enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed to further
infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships
and the dissatisfaction of your worships' most affectionate subjects.
Peter
Stuyvesant; petition to the Dutch West India Company for the
expulsion of Jews from New Amsterdam,
September 22,
1654
We would have liked to effectuate and fulfill your
wishes and request that the new territories should no more be allowed to be
infected by people of the Jewish nation, for we foresee therefrom the same
difficulties which you fear, but after having further weighed and considered the
matter, we observe that this would be somewhat unreasonable and unfair,
especially because of the considerable loss sustained by this nation, with
others, in the taking of Brazil, as also because of the large amount of capital
which they still have invested in the shares of this company. Therefore after
many deliberations we have finally decided and resolved to apostille [annotate]
upon a certain petition presented by said Portuguese Jews that these people may
travel and trade to and in New Netherland and live and remain there, provided
the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the
community, but be supported by their own nation. You will now govern yourself
accordingly.
Reply of the Board of the Dutch West India Company to Peter Stuyvesant,
April 26, 1655
If Troy Donahue could be a movie star, then I could be a movie star!
Line from the Broadway musical, A Chorus Line; American actor
Donahue was born on January 27, 1936
January 27 is the 27th
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 338
days remaining (339 in leap years).
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Up Helly Aa (Up-Halliday;
Up Hally A'; Antonsmas),
Shetland, Scotland (last Tuesday of January)
A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
This Shetland festival is derived from the ancient Yuletide festival celebrating the triumph of the sun over darkness. There you will see bonfires, blazing barrels of tar, and torch-lit processions, ending with the burning of a Viking longship or galley. People dressed as Vikings sing and dance.
The first celebration was in 1878, when instead
of burning the usual tar-barrel on Auld New Year's Eve, a Shetland yoal
(a traditional boat) decorated with a dragon's head and tail was burned.
It did not become a regular event until 1889.
There is a main guizer who is dubbed the Jarl, and a committee
which one must be part of for fifteen years before one can be a jarl,
and only one person is elected onto this committee once a year. This
procession culminates in the torches being thrown into a replica Viking
ship. The Lerwick Up
Helly Aa is claimed by some to be Britain's biggest fire festival and
torchlight procession.
"In earlier times there was an exorcizing ceremony at
midnight, with the expulsion of evil spirits who were ritually driven out of the
house."
JC Cooper, The Aquarian Dictionary of
Festivals, Aquarian Press, UK, 1990, pp. 209-210
"It has been suggested that the Up Helly Aa is a relatively new festival, whose riotous elements were introduced by men returning from the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th Century ... In subsequent years, it grew and adapted to reflect the strong cultural links between Shetland and its neighbouring Scandanavian Nations.
"Until the introduction of the torchlight procession in Edinburgh, the torchlight procession in the main town, Lerwick, could rightly claim to be the biggest procession of its kind. It certainly is still one of the oldest ...
"At a designated burning point in the town, the torches are thrown into the galley, following which the 40 plus squads visit the 11 local halls and perform raucous sketches to entertain their hosts.
"Lerwick's is the biggest Up Helly Aa, but there are also Viking fire festivals in Scalloway on 12th and 13th and Nesting and Girlsta – taking Hogmanay or 'the daft days' well into the second month of the year." Source"There is some evidence that people in rural Shetland celebrated the 24th day after Christmas as 'Antonsmas' or 'Up Helly Night', but there is no evidence that their cousins in Lerwick did the same. The emergence of Yuletide and New Year festivities in the town seems to post-date the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers and sailors came home with rowdy habits and a taste for firearms." Source
Up-Helly-Aa 1998 Up Helly Aa videos at Google Video and YouTube Wikimedia Commons More
First
Tuesday after January
23: Eton Montem
A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
Boy Bishop
practices (see December
6) in the UK continued in a form at Eton College
(founded in 1440
by Henry
VI) in the Montem
ceremony (Ad Montem: to the
mount), which continued for many years. Instead of ecclesiastical garb,
though, the children wore military uniforms. The students marched to Salt
Hill, dined, and marched back to Eton. Certain boys (salt-bearers) and their scouts, extracted money from
spectators. Each donor was given a bit of salt from the salt-bearer's
handkerchief.
About the mid-18th
Century it was a biennial ceremony; by the 19th it was a
triennial one. One custom, certainly left over from the Boy Bishop
customs, was a boy dressed as a parson who read prayers, and kicked
another boy, dressed as his clerk, down the hill. Queen Charlotte saw this
and disliked it, so it discontinued. King George III attended the Montem
with his family, and under him it was very popular. The headmaster of Eton
asked Queen Victoria to discontinue the custom. Originally it was held on
a day between St
Nicholas's day and Holy Innocents. It was then
celebrated on the first Tuesday in
Hilary term, which started on January 23.
After 1759 it was on Whit-Tuesday.
Robert
Chambers, (Ed.), The
Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection
with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers,
London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and 1869
edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The
English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)
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