CELEBRATIONS AND FESTIVALS FOR SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN A celebratory guide, based on curriculum, for teachers and parents for the enhancement of the equality and meaning of the annual cycle of life. Celebrations have been enjoyed by humankind for eons. Stories of festivals of the past place many of our own in context. For example, how […]
FESTIVALS: Waldorf
Celebrations and Festivals: Summer Solstice
DECEMBER 21 Summer Solstice <This is June 20 in the Western Hemisphere> With the first flash of sunlight on December 21 on the face of Mount Warning in northern NSW, the most easterly region of the continent, Australia will celebrate again the triumph of the light – the longest day of the year. The Summer […]
Celebrations and Festivals: Spring Equinox
SEPTEMBER 21 Spring Equinox <This is March 20 in the Western Hemisphere> Australia seems to stand alone globally in its designations of the four seasons. All other traditions have, for example, Spring beginning on the vernal equinox, in Australia this is September 21. So why does our spring nominally begin on September 1? This shift […]
Celebrations and Festivals: Winter Solstice
JUNE 21 Winter Solstice Festival <This is December 21 in the Western Hemisphere> To depart from the usual expositional style; I have penned a small story to introduce some of the historical aspects of the all-important Winter Solstice Festival. At the school in which your author taught for many years, the Winter Festival was easily […]
Celebrations and Festivals: Autumn Equinox
MARCH 21 Autumn Equinox Harvest Festival <This is September 23 in the Western Hemisphere> When I was a young man, my only associations of Homebush were of riding in a train to work, and passing lines of filthy, barred rail cars stuffed with sheep; the forlorn survivors trampling the dead. The smell was equally offensive, […]
Celebrations and Festivals: Saint Valentine’s Day, February 14th
FEBRUARY 14 St. Valentine’s Day February 14 is St Valentine’s Day, or more correctly, the Feast of St. Valentinus. Actually, the generic name for this increasingly popular festival is Candlemas, meaning “sacred white light’. The official church title, however, for this wordy but profound “love” celebration is Feast of the Purification -of the Blessed Virgin […]