National holiday

“ Thanksgiving is a holiday rooted in the American spirit of gratitude and sharing. We see this spirit in America today. When the communities along the Gulf Coast were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Americans came together to provide help for their neighbors in need. ”

“ Chief Massasoit wanted to show Governor Bradford that the Indians knew how to play fairly.”
“So that’s how Thanksgiving became,” said the boy named Billy.
“Yes,” answered Somebody, “but it was a long time after that before it became the good old holiday that we know now.
“In the first year of his office, President George Washington issued a proclamation recommending that November 26, 1789, be kept as a day of “national thanksgiving” for the establishment of a form of government that made for safety and happiness. ”

“ Festivals and feasts, religious and otherwise, which are many and varied, afford some relaxation for the people. There are, according to a list compiled, some 28 religious festivals, 16 national holidays, and 14 popular feast-days. ”

“ Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. ”

“ This interest falls well within the tradition of government accommodation and acknowledgment of religion that has marked our history from the beginning. [2] It cannot be disputed that government, if it chooses, may participate in sharing with its citizens the joy of the holiday season, by declaring public holidays, installing or permitting festive displays, sponsoring celebrations and parades, and providing holiday vacations for its employees. All levels of our government do precisely that. ”

“ Of all nights of the year there is not one that is more anxiously awaited by young people than the night that precedes Christmas. Then begins the great festival of the year; the festival in honour of the birth of Christ; the festival that reminds us of the Child born in a manger, of the shepherds near Bethlehem watching their flocks by night, and of the angels that sang of peace and goodwill to men. It is the most joyous of all holiday seasons ”

“ The picture of that Thanksgiving Day, the block-house with its few cannon, the Pilgrim men in buff breeches, red waistcoats, and green or sad-colored mandillions; the great company of Indians, gay in holiday paint and feathers and furs; the few sad, overworked, homesick women, in worn and simple gowns, with plain coifs and kerchiefs, and the pathetic handful of little children, forms a keen contrast to the prosperous, cheerful Thanksgivings of a century later. ”

“ Warm but fresh—how could it help being fresh in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as young as she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it was long since they had had a holiday. ”

“ Neither rain nor hail, nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays. ”

“ Travelers sometimes tell us that of all the nations of the earth the Americans have the fewest public holidays. This, if true, is not much to be regretted. A public holiday is very apt to be a public nuisance, disturbing the peace of quiet people, and multiplying temptations for the young and the thought [Pg 22] less. ”

“ The city's great holiday is the Mardi Gras carnival, which is celebrated just before Lent. The keys of the city are then given over to the King of the Carnival, and all day long high revelry holds sway. Brilliant floats, representing scenes of wonderful quaintness and loveliness, parade through flower-garlanded avenues thronged with people who have come from every quarter of the globe. ”

“ It is the day when all the people, from the highest to the lowest, have a holiday. For days, and even weeks, preparations are made to celebrate the festival with proper ceremony. Never are the streets of the cities and towns so filled with gayly dressed crowds of people hurrying here and there, buying and selling, as during the last days of the dying year. ”

“ For men who know how to bear themselves company there are few better ways of improving a holiday, especially a home-keeping, home-coming, family feast, like our autumnal Thanksgiving, than to walk in one’s own childish steps—up through the old cattle pasture behind the old homestead, into the old woods. ”

“ The very presence of a lengthened festivity—for festivity can never be solitary—would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. ”

“ Across this land as people gather together with loved ones to savor the bounty of the Thanksgiving Holiday, I invite each family, each religious congregation, each community and city, to celebrate your experience of the American heritage. ”

“ But in Congreve and in Wycherley all the conventional values are inverted: it is the holiday of the worldly and it has all the exhilaration of a holiday. What could be more gratifying and more cheerful than these husbands and wives who are never faithful, these young men whose intentions are never honourable, these coquettes who never want to marry? ”

“ On behalf of the thousands of families who have been fed, clothed and provided with Christmas gifts, I stand before my fellow members of Congress and thank you for a job well done. You have demonstrated the true meaning of the holiday season. ”

“ From beginning to end, men and women, young and old, official bodies, towns, cities, States, Congress, all vied in testimonies of devotion and gratitude, while the children of the schools, boys and maidens, swelled the incomparable holiday, which, stretching from North to South, and covering the whole country, absorbed for the time every difference, and made all feel as children of one household. ”

“ Every departure, every admission of a scholar, was celebrated with brilliant display; every birthday furnished the opportunity of a feast, and every holiday became the welcomed occasion for a pleasure excursion which the young men on horseback, and followed by their servants in livery, made in the vicinity of Paris. ”

“ Pleas of necessity have been put forward where contractors desired to push jobs and profits. Sunday excursions are universal, and in order to gain their Sunday pleasure-outings several millions of people of all races keep several other millions hard at work on the day of rest. All places are crowded on Sunday except the churches. Go among the foreign elements in the city and you would never know it was Sunday. Holiday has supplanted holy-day. Observe the trolley-cars or subway or elevated trains on Sunday and you will see nine foreigners out of every ten persons. ”

“ The great abuse of holidays is when they are too few. There are offices, we understand, in the city, in which, with the exception of Sundays, people have but one holiday or so throughout the year, which appears to us a very melancholy hilarity. ”

“ But let the young men have Saturday afternoon for their boating and bowling and various pastimes, and they will be far more disposed to hear what the minister has to say on Sunday,—far more disposed, let us hope, to join in prayer and praise. One very obvious and practical consideration is, that many of them, probably the larger part, can spend on a single holiday all the holiday money they have to spend. ”

“ This is a season for millions of Americans to be together with family, to continue long-held holiday traditions, and to show our gratitude to those we love. And along the way, some of us might even watch a little basketball or eat some Christmas cookies, too. ”

“ In some European nations, especially France and Scotland, New Year’s Day is a more important holiday than Christmas. If you were a French peasant child you might put a wooden shoe on the hearth for a gift at Christmas, but grownups in France exchange gifts at the New Year festival, at which time there are family parties, with much merrymaking.
“In America the observance of New Year’s Day is varied. New Year’s Eve there are ‘watch night’ services in the churches—gay street revelers—dancing and theater parties; and New Year’s Day is a time for general entertaining and visiting. ”

“ Every year, millions of Americans and visitors from abroad travel throughout our country to see for themselves the beauty of our land, the hospitality of our people, and the record of our history. They discover the glory and story of America, the evidence and the experience of all the hard-won freedom, justice, and opportunity we and our ancestors have cherished and preserved. National Tourism Week fittingly celebrates tourists, travelers, and those who earn their livelihood by serving them. ”

“ I have often wondered what country children do for a holiday. Do good people go round collecting to give them a day in London or Liverpool or Manchester, so that their stunted lives that stretch on from year to year with never a whiff of town fog, never a glimpse of green 'buses, or dangerous crossings, or furnace-smoke, may be expanded and elevated? ”

“ For these reasons—and some others, which are more personal and less philosophical—we love all old traditions and holiday customs. Like honest Sir Andrew Aguecheek, we "delight in masques and revels, sometimes altogether." Many a happy chance has conducted us unpremeditatedly into the midst of some rustic festival, whose recollection is amongst our pleasant memories yet,—and many a one have we gone venturously forth to seek,—when we dwelt in the more immediate neighborhood of the haunts to which, one by one, these traditionary observances are retiring before the face of civilization! ”

“ Paragraph 1 - One is permitted to send his friend game, an animal or a chicken, even living ones, or wines, oils, flours, and legumes, but not produce because that needs to be ground, which is a forbidden labor on a holiday. ”

“ Half holidays during summer should be established for Government employees; it is as desirable for wageworkers who toil with their hands as for salaried officials whose labor is mental that there should be a reasonable amount of holiday. ”

“ With the High Church people, again, it is a Holiday, to be enjoyed after a certain peculiar fashion of their own; while the great mass of the population outrage both these parties by treating half the day as a fast and the other half as a festival. ”

“ This Thanksgiving, we are mindful that many of our finest citizens are spending the holiday far from their homes and loved ones, and we know that their service makes it possible for us to live in freedom. ”

“ For the pleasures of a roving life and the excitement of not knowing when you wake what the day may bring forth.”
“It is preferable, at least, to the humdrum holiday of the ordinary tourist.”
“Holiday!” He looked incredulous. “Scarcely a holiday in the sense in which most men understand the term. You are tied, I presume, by no limit of time or means; is it not rather the business of your life now to rove where you will, answerable to no one, cut off from all ties, your very family in total ignorance of your whereabouts?” ”

“ The peculiarity of our attitude towards Christmas, which at worst is a vacation, may be clearly seen by contrasting it with our attitude towards another vacation—the summer holiday. We do not have to brace and force ourselves up to the enjoyment of the summer holiday. ”

“ A half-holiday every week would be a mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, "loves to look upon what is old." My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its woods, and towers, and noble river, seem as if bathed in the red light of gorgeous sunsets. ”

“ And if Sunday fishing is allowed, do not give umbrage to many of the parishioners going to church by making a parade of your waders and fishing rod. Either get to your water before church time or else wait till the church bells are over before you walk along the village street. Busy City men get scant leisure for sport, and may fairly be excused for utilising their week-end holiday to the full. Much latitude may be allowed to them in this respect, provided they are careful not to outrage the religious feelings of others. ”

“ In America a holiday is a day when people dress in their best, and either walk the streets of a great city, or else take drives, or go to museums or theatres, or do something which smacks of civilization. ”

“ Since the American nation fairly got hold of the holiday—in some parts of the country, as in New England, it has been universal only about fifty years—we have made it hum, as we like to say. We have appropriated the English conviviality, the German simplicity, the Roman pomp, and we have added to it an element of expense in keeping with our own greatness. Is anybody beginning to feel it a burden, this sweet festival of charity and good-will, and to look forward to it with apprehension? Is the time approaching when we shall want to get somebody to play it for us, like base-ball? ”

“ No other holiday has so rich an heritage of old customs and observances as Christmas. The Yule Log has from time immemorial been haled to the open fire-place on Christmas Eve, and lighted with the embers of its predecessor to sanctify the roof-tree and protect it against those evil spirits over whom the season is in everyway a triumph. ”

“ Nowadays, when the working day is so short and the working year so interspersed with ample vacations, the old-fashioned holiday has ceased to serve any purpose, and would be regarded as a nuisance. We prefer to choose and use our leisure time as we please. ”

“ The holiday season is a time of gift giving and merrymaking; a time when millions help churches, synagogues, and organizations like the Salvation Army and Toys for Tots provide for the less fortunate among us, a time when huge turkey dinners are cooked, parents find themselves staying up late wrapping toys, and children's eyes are filled with more and more excitement every day-a time, indeed, when all the world seems taken up with plans and celebrations and family. ”