Category: about holidays

Holi – Celebrating colors, harvest and life!

How would you like to be smeared with a splash of rainbow-colored water and powder from head to toe before you even realize what’s happening? Not your idea of a perfect day is it? But, if you thought that being the victim of a practical joke is the last thing anyone would ever want, you probably haven’t heard of Holi. The Indian festival of colors. 

Colors = Life! 

This popular Indian festival represents the successful winter harvest and the coming of Spring or Vasanth. This is one day when Indians across the country, especially Hindus, celebrate life in all its vibrant hues, abandoning inhibitions. 

The Holi festival celebrates the spring season. But it is also symbolic of the way Lord Krishna engaged in a playful celebration of life itself with the beautiful Gopikas (woman cowherds) of Brindavan or Gokul (the gardens where they herded the cows)- singing, dancing and surrendering to love in its purest, divine form. There are several other historical and mythological stories also associated with the origins and significance of Holi. 

 

Family Fun Fest!

Today, Holi is a day when families in India come together, exchange delicacies, sweet dishes and gifts, smear each other with color(gulaal powder) and just have a good time. Getting intoxicated with bhang, holding Matka or Earthen-pot breaking competitions, playing pranks have all come to be associated with this joyous festival that people of all ages enjoy and look forward to. Even if you haven’t experienced it yourself, you can easily get a feel of the spirit of the occasion from numerous Bollywood films. If you live far away from family or friends, don’t forget to send free Holi ecards from our bright and cheerful collection created specially for the occasion.

Some of our upcoming posts will explore the origins of this vibrant Indian festival, the rituals associated with it and other aspects. Holi falls on March 11 2009. So, you still have time to plan a celebration with friends and family. The only question is – are you ready to get your hands (and possibly your outfit, your face and your whole body) dirty?!!

April Fool’s Day History

      One of only a handful of holidays commemorated around the world is, perhaps surprisingly, April Fool’s Day.  Every year, on the first day of April, people from every country and all walks of life come together in a tradition of playing pranks on one another—from the small-scale and relatively benign, to larger and (in some views) mean-spirited practical jokes.

      But what a lot of people may not realize is that April Fool’s Day has a real, historical tradition behind it.  Accounts differ, but the most popular belief is that the holiday came into being shortly after adoption of the Gregorian calendar.  People who hadn’t yet adapted to the times, and still lived according to the outdated Julian Calendar, were called April Fools. 

      While the first of April is usually associated with friends and co-workers playing jokes on one another, many times, throughout the years, larger hoaxes have been put on by organizations.  In the 1950s, for instance, a television station announced that Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed; and in the mid 1990s, in one of the more notorious April Fool’s Day jokes, restaurant chain Taco Bell claimed to have purchased Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell.  Both occurrences—and countless others like them—prompted scores of panicked phone calls and written letters from members of the public.

      April Fool’s Day is by no means the world’s only prank-day holiday, but it has, for perhaps unexplainable reasons, emerged as the most popular one.