May Day

May 1st. May Day. The holiday when people hang flower baskets on their neighbors' doors. I've always wanted to do that, but I never really knew what May Day was about. Apparently it's about a lot of different things that all happen to fall on the same day {poor planning on someone's part}. Here are two of them:

Beltane

Beltane was a Celtic calendar feast ushering in the start of summer.

Bonfires were common features of Beltane celebrations. Related rituals included driving cattle between two fires, dancing around the fires, and burning witches in effigy. Another tradition was Beltane cakes, which would be broken into several pieces, one of which was blackened. They would be drawn by celebrants at random; the person getting the unlucky blackened piece would face a mock execution.

Bringing in the May

In medieval England, people would celebrate the start of spring by going out to the country or woods—"going a-maying"—and gathering greenery and flowers, or "bringing in the may."

Another English tradition is the maypole. Some towns had permanent maypoles that would stay up all year; others put up a new one each May. In any event, the pole would be hung with greenery and ribbons, brightly painted, and otherwise decorated, and served as a central point for the festivities.

May Day was also a time for morris dancing and other dances, often around the maypole. In the 19th century, people began to braid the maypole with ribbons by weaving in and out in the course of a dance. Other later traditions include making garlands for children and the crowning of the May Queen.

And that just gave me an idea. In honor of the neat holidays for May Day, let's crown a Blog May Queen/King. We all have our favorite blogs and bloggers, how about nominating some for the crown?

I'll take all the nominations and post about them, maybe even have some guest posts. At the end of May I'll put up a poll and let everyone vote. The winner will get a "May Queen/King" award :)

What do you think? Yea? Nay? Pass the word around and let your followers know. Maybe someone will nominate you! :)

~Stephanie

The Ten Commandments

Today is the day before Easter. Do you know what that means?

"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS" COMES ON TV TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I was little, the family would turn on this 1956 movie every night before Easter. It started at 7pm and went off at midnight, so I was never allowed to see the whole thing. I usually had to go to bed around 9 o'clock, but here's the thing: if you sat on the stairs just right, you could see the reflection of the TV in a picture on the wall. So my little sister Sarah and I would just go halfway down the stairs, pop a squat and watch until we couldn't keep our eyes open.

Which would be around 10 o'clock, so I hadn't actually seen the whole movie until a few years ago.

There were a few years, like between 11 and 14, that I didn't care enough to watch "The Ten Commandments" even though I could have. Two years ago when I was 15, I pushed everything aside for that night and stayed up through the whole thing. BIG DEAL :D

The last year I was lame or something and, like, didn't watch it. What a loser.

This year, I've been looking forward to the movie since about January. I'm not kidding. Every once in a while during the day, I'll get a craving for the movie. It just hits me--*BAM* "Oh mannnn, I can't wait until 'The Ten Commandments' comes on!!!"

I think it's more the principle of the thing than the actual movie. But the actual movie is pretty awesome too.

{Secretly I think 50% of the reason I love it is because Yul Brynner is Rameses/Pharaoh ;)

And about 45% is because of Joshua, who pulls off "Hebrew slave" pretty dang well.
}

So, while there are also a lot of good spiritual reasons to watch the movie {even though it's not really accurate, so that bothers me}, you can also watch it for Yul Brynner and John Derek.

And Charlton Heston is in it too. Whatever.

;)

~Stephanie

Erin go Bragh

I've been thinking about St. Patrick's Day for WEEKS now. I have absolutely no idea why I was so excited for it. I think I just like going all out for things, and with St. Patrick's Day, it's pretty easy to go all out. Clearly.

Me and my sister, who's actually younger than me even though she's taller (you can't really tell here).

~Stephanie

P.S. I promise something of actual interest is coming up. I'm bound to have something good to say sooner or later.