Whether they're decorating Easter trees or celebrating Wagner's birthday by playing recordings of his Ring cycle operas and incinerating a model of Valhalla on an outdoor barbecue to the closing strains of "Gotterdämerung," Americans know both how to create and how to celebrate holidays. Jack Santino's guide to such frivolity is a wonderfully readable exploration of holidays, periods of festivity, and life-cycle rituals and celebrations. Santino draws on history, anthropology, popular culture, and folklore to show the intricate relationships between holidays and the roles that celebrations and rituals play in people's lives.

Special days are times for fun and togetherness. They also link us to the Earth's seasons, and they help us keep track of how time passes. Most of all, they are deeply rooted in folk tradition. Learn more about: • the winter holidays, like Christmas and Hanukkah. • spring celebrations like Easter and Asian New Year's.• fall festivals, like Halloween and the Day of the Dead. • summer celebrations, like the Fourth of July. Holidays and festivals draw us together. They remind us of who we are, where we come from, and what we believe. As we travel through the year, folk festivals give us strength. And they make life more fun!

Countless different festivals are celebrated all over the world throughout the year. Some are national holidays, celebrated for religious and cultural reasons, or to mark an important date in history, while others are just for fun. Give thanks and tuck into a delicious meal with friends and family at Thanksgiving, get caught up in a messy tomato fight in Spain at La Tomatina, add a splash of color to your day at the Holi festival of colors and celebrate the life and achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. With fact-filled text accompanied by beautifully bright illustrations from the wonderfully talented Chris Corr, prepare yourself for a journey as we travel around the world celebrating and uncovering a visual feast of culture.

Jump into January with this seasonal packet. The calendar and bulletin board ideas will help you and your students brighten your winter classroom. Use the informational texts and coloring pages for activities surrounding New Year’s Day, Chinese New Year, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Keenly attuned to the play of symbols, this anthropological study explores one of the major manifestations of Chinese popular tradition: the celebration of lunar the New Year. It analyzes a multitude of folk practices within a holistic perspective on Chinese traditional society, crafting a new picture of a world in which the social rhetoric of gender, lineage continuity, and ancestry were challenged by ritual manifestations of iconic symbolism. Viewed through the lens of Chinese imagery, the traditional calendar reveals new stories about the social organization of time as an expression of existential concerns in late imperial Chinese social life.

New Year's celebrations are times when families and friends come together to celebrate endings and new beginnings. When a religious element is added to these celebrations, there is also a sense of spiritual duty. Rather than simply 'ring in the New Year' with food and festivities, participants in religious New Year's celebrations consider the meaning of the holiday, the passage of time, and the opportunity for personal change. Focusing on Diwali (Hindu), Rosh Hashanah (Jewish), El am Hejir (Muslim), and Matariki (Maori), Religious New Year's Celebrations explores how cultures around the world contemplate the passage of time during these deeply sacred festivals.