The Beginning

Like most people, I celebrated holidays pretty unconsciously for the first decades of my life. By that I mean that I did whatever it was that was done on each holiday, but without reflecting much on the why of those things -- what they meant and where and when they had originated.

All that changed some time during my years as a teacher of English as a foreign language to young adults in Mexico. (I lived in Mexico City from 1983 to 2006 and taught at the language center of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional during much of that time.) Students would ask questions, or a topic would appear in a textbook or reading comprehension exercise, and I would find myself needing to describe and explain our American holiday observances and traditions. As often happens to teachers, I was the one to learn the most.

At first, I was working in pre- and early-Internet times, so my principal resources were books and magazine articles. Jack Santino's book, All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life (published in 1995 by Illini Books) became my new favorite book, but I read many. I loved learning about the historical, folkloric, and religious aspects of holidays and holy days, both the ones in the United States and those in Mexico and elsewhere. I enjoyed seeing how geography, anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, theology and other disciplines enriched the study of these special occasions. Most of all, though, I was fascinated to learn why we did we did the things we did on the days that we did.

I am by no means an "expert" on holidays and traditions, but I definitely an enthusiast. In this blog I hope to share with you some of what I have learned through the years and from many sources.