The Easter Feast is still rollin’ on! It’s gonna go on STRONG until Pentecost… 8 June. That is, we have all of May and the first week of June as a festive season. Feast ye BOUNTEOUSLY. We’re Christians… that’s what we do!
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Christianity isn’t only theology and morals… it’s about celebration, joy, and humanity. Easter isn’t only the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Flesh… yes, it IS that, but it’s more besides! It’s about Easter eggs, kulichi (them’s the thing-a-ma-bobs being baked and blessed above), your child’s smile, and a feast! It’s divine and human, sublime and earthy, utterly transcendent, yet closely intimate… all at once, all mixed up, and inextricable.
It’s almost here. If Christ be not risen from the dead, your faith is in vain… that’s the long and the short of it all. Keep it focused… it’s not much longer…
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Last night at sundown, the Pesach (Passover) season began for Jews. This is the one of the holiest periods in their religion, it celebrates the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt some 3,300 years ago. Every year since then, Jews marked this occasion… Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad…
May you have a most blessed holy season.
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Voices from Russia 
12 November 2014. A View From the East… Spying on Santa (Luo Jie/China Daily)
Tags: Barack Obama, cartoons, celebration of Christmas, celebrations, China Daily, Chinese, Christmas, Christmas and holiday season, Christmas cake, Christmas celebrations, Christmas customs, editorial cartoons, epiphany celebration, Father Christmas, Feast of the Nativity, Happy Holidays, Holiday, holiday time, holidays, Holidays and Observances, Luo Jie, Merry Christmas, National Security Agency, Nativity, NSA, political commentary, politics, Russian holidays, Santa, Santa Claus, United States, USA, Western Christmas
Spying on Santa
Luo Jie
2013
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Yeah… it’s almost American Christmas season… that is, from American Thanksgiving to Catholic Christmas on 25 December. Unlike trad Christians in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Reformation Churches, Anglo Americans have a holiday season that PRECEDES the holiday (I shit you not). There ain’t no “Twelve Days of Christmas”… there’s four weeks of utter commercialised madness starting with Black Friday (the Black Mass of this “holiday”)… then, Catholic Christmas… and all Anglo Americans collapse in a stupor, glad that the “holiday season” is over for another year. There’s not even a New Year’s celebration of any note! It’s not like the Russian holiday of New Year’s-Christmas-Epiphany… nineteen days of partying hearty and fun (including jumping in an ice hole on Epiphany… no lie, I’ve done it… don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). It has none of the hearty exuberance of “c’était un Noël au Québec” (grand-père has to come and give the family bénédiction for the coming year first)… NOBODY decorates for the season “comme le font les québécois” (must be that Caribou that they drink… half moonshine and half homemade wine). It isn’t the Sicilian midnight feast after Christmas Mass… nor is it the homely joy of an English Christmas Cake… it’s a deadening exercise… so much so that I wonder why they even engage in it.
Keep your wits about you and stay out of the malls from Black Thursday until Catholic Christmas. Then… CELEBRATE… feast, feast, feast, like real men and women and kids should. Pass me the roast beast, please… I WILL take seconds, if you will.
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