The Holiday Season: Today

Today many of us yearn to make the holiday season
more meaningful, more loving, perhaps more spiritual.

Candlegrove traces the winter holiday season daily from Thanksgiving through Epiphany.

`December 30, 2007`

It's the fifth day of Kwanzaa, the seven-day African-American holiday celebration. Today's principle is NIA--purpose.

`Tips for the day`

If it's below freezing where you are, today would be a good day to prepare ice luminaria to light for the New Year. Here's how.

Waverly Fitzgerald's instructions are the more permanent punched-tin luminaria. You freeze water in the cans before punching designs in them.

New Year's Eve is also traditionally a time to tie up unfinished business. In many cultures, a thorough housecleaning is part of the tradition.

You might also want to use this day of preparation for such traditional drinks as wassail or eggnog.

If your holiday celebration depends on knowing sunrise and/or sunset times for winter solstice or any other day in your location, find it online at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The database covers 22,000 US locations. For world locations, you'll need your latitude and longitude.

This site also lists solstices and equinoxes through 2020. You'll need to convert to your time zone from Universal Time.

Wassail

Everything you could possibly want to know about one ancient holiday tradition, gathered together in one jolly Web site The Web's Wassail Epicenter!

New Year's Resolutions

Good tips on how to keep your New Year's Resolutions
Cute! Random New Year's Resolution Generator

New Year's Foods

In Italy, lentils are served at New Year's, because their abundant tiny shapes symbolize wealth. In the American South, the tradition is black-eyed peas. In Scotland, there's a whole menu for celebrating Hogmanay. In Japan, eating toshi-koshi soba noodles for longevity is the New Year's Eve tradition, while a whole range of foods, osechi-ryori, are eaten throughout the New Year celebration.