31/12/2008

Christmas

        There`s no doubt that this holiday is loved by both grown- ups and children. If in the past its basis was exclusively religion, nowadays it`s a family feast with definite traditions in which a mythical figure named Santa Claus plays the pivotal role. Actually, its symbols (a fir tree, candles, giving gifts) also have no religious meaning.

 

          I`m inclined to think that nowadays a religious component of the holiday isn`t of paramount importance. It`s mostly a secular family holiday which is also celebrated by non-Christians. In many countries it lost its religious meaning without a trace. It`s celebrated as a kind of performance. In Mexico, on days leading up to Christmas, the search of Mary and Joseph for a place to stay is reenacted and children try to break a piñata filled with toys and candy. Christmas is a great summer festival in Brazil, including picnics, fireworks, and other festivities as well as a solemn procession of priests to the church to celebrate midnight mass. In India, the fir as Christmas tree is replaced by the mango tree or the bamboo tree, and houses are decorated with mango leaves. Japan serves as illustration of a different sort. There, in a predominantly Shintō country, the secular aspects of the holiday—Christmas trees and decorations, even the singing of Christmas songs such as "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer" or "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" —instead of the religious aspects are widely observed.

Useful information: - www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

                                          - www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_worldwide

                                          - www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_card

                                          - www.holidays.net/christmas/

                                          - www.soon.org.uk/christmas.htm

                                          - www.cresourcei.org/cyxmas.html

20/11/2008

November 20th - International Day of children rights
 

When we see a baby in a cradle and his tenderness is inspiration, the younger deprive of hope where the convulsive environment injury them and us in this century of the big developments. A world of new technologies, even more the increasing moral and climate unbalance. We wonder..What will happen with them?. May be will be possible live in the equilibrium of the necessary things and fight for challenges in an internal fight to help the usual nor unusual, the interest nor the uninterested wondering where is going o­n our internal child, the child we have birth, the child that need us.There are places they are abandoned, they are easy target, they are outraged and the probes are hidden.
 
During the Convention for the rights of children signed this day November 20th, the date the Assembly approve the Declaration for Children Rights in 1959: Right to the Education, Right to the Identity and the Family, Right to the Participation, Right to the Protection, Right to the good Health.
 
During the peak of the millennium, politics leaders made rules for the eight most important principium of the Millennium(ODM) they started reducing the poverty and the needing to stop the increasing virus of VIH and the firm conception ofthe universal primary school till year 2015, these concepts are pointed to the humankind mainly to the childhood.
 
UNICEF and governmental and private organizations around the world are working hard to protect them even that, we know in every place violence is more frequently as we think. Today children are ill treatment physically, psychically they’re abandon, suffering of Munchausen’s syndrome, most of them are punished by people who are in charge of their security.
 
The children are members of the society with less capacity of self protection, children in the school, in the orphanage,in the streets, in zone of wars, in centers of exclusion, in fields, in factories..
 
This is a disturbing and persistent situation in several parts of the globe. In each child I’m from my childhood so different to gave them love I wish to shout for the life, so I hold them: The children in Kenya, 93% are orphans shattered by VIH , the younger immigrants expulsed from the borders, the prisoners children in Paraguay, the whipped in Arabian, the killed in the Congo Republic, whose are demanded hard worksand prostitution in Africa and Thailand, the children soldiers in Sri Lanka and Colombia, like these more cases are happened , right there where the protection seams is a hard and insufficient work in this modern present time we are living. All these make us watch the existence of a isolate love into the loneliness of the children. If we o­nly see our own around without showing others that there are more children living defenseless, is possible to add in the fight with this children eyes, they need us never mind their races and traditions, they are also our children,
 
To you, my child:
Hold your heavy load
Take down the strength of the inertia
Come to the sparkling down
And wait
Sat o­n the soft seat in the grass.
 
 Susana Roberts,
Poet, Windows Live Messenger
Argentina
November 21, 2006

What`s your opinion on the point? It`s very interesting to see your attitude to the problem under question. Feel free to write in my blog, express your thougts and offer your ways to correct the situation.

 

 If you`re interested, you can find a lot of information on the following web-sites:

- www.peacefromharmony.org

- www.actagainstviolence.apa.org/materials/index.html

How Did Colón Become Columbus?

Explorer's Name Varies From Country to Country
By Gerald Erichsen

       The basic explanation of that is actually fairly simple. Columbus' name in English is actually an anglicized version of the Columbus birth name. According to most accounts, Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, as Cristoforo Colombo, which is obviously much more similar to the English version than is the Spanish one.

       In most of the major European languages, Columbus' name is similar to the Italian one: It's Christophe Colomb in French, Kristoffer Kolumbus in Swedish, Christoph Kolumbus in German and Christoffel Columbus in Dutch.

       So perhaps the question that should be asked is how Cristoforo Colombo ended up as Cristóbal Colón in his adopted country of Spain. (Sometimes his first name in Spanish is rendered as Cristóval, which is pronounced the same.) Unfortunately, the answer to that appears to be lost in history. Most historical accounts indicate that Colombo changed his name to Colón when he moved to Spain and became a citizen. The reasons remain unclear, although he most likely did it to make himself sound more Spanish, just as as many European immigrants to the early United States often anglicized their last names or changed them entirely. In other languages of the Iberian Peninsula, his name has characteristics of both the Spanish and Italian versions: Cristóvão Colombo in Portuguese and Cristofor Colom in Catalan.

      Incidentally, some historians have questioned the traditional accounts surrounding Columbus's Italian origins. Some even claim that Columbus was in reality a Portuguese Jew whose real name was Salvador Fernandes Zarco.

      In any case, there's little question that Columbus' explorations were a key step in the spread of Spanish to what we now know as Latin America. The country of Colombia was named after him, as was the Costa Rican currency (the colón).

October 12 

Columbus Day

         Cristoforo Colombo or Crostóbal Colón discovered America when he was seeking a westward route to India. To his dying day, the master mariner and navigator believed he had achieved his quest, and denied discovering a new continent. While Columbus was not the first European to encounter America, he did achieve what no known previous explorer had: he sailed directly across the uncharted sea, without staying in sight of land, navigating by the stars.
       It would be a decade before Europeans realized that the lands Columbus had reached were not part of Asia but an entirely different continent. This was due to astronomical observations made by Amerigo Vespucci off the coast of South America.
      In light of Vespucci's calculations, Columbus' own denials, and the earlier voyage of Leif Ericsson, the achievement of the 1492 expedition is sometimes erroneously dismissed as insignificant. But it is important to remember that without the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Vespucci would have had no opportunity to conclude a "new continent" had been discovered, and the Americas would not have been opened to European incursion -- for good or for ill -- at that time in history. The development of American civilization, and perhaps even world civilization, could therefore have proceeded along entirely different lines.

        The first recorded celebration honoring the discovery of America by Europeans took place on October 12, 1792 in New York City. The event, which celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World, was organized by The Society of St. Tammany (also known as the Columbian Order).
San Francisco's Italian community held their first Columbus Day celebration in 1869. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison urged citizens to participate in the the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus' first voyage. It was during this event that the Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy, was recited publically for the first time.
       Colorado was the first state to observe the holiday in 1905.
In 1937, President Roosevelt proclaimed October 12 as "Columbus Day" and in 1971, President Nixon declared the second Monday of October a national holiday.


   See more information http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/oct12.html
   www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/columbus.html
   www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/columbus
   www.usemb.se/Holidays/celebrate/Columbus.html