6 February 2019. Don’t Try This At Home… Las Luminarias Festival in Spain

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On the eve of the Catholic feast of St Anthony (17 January), the Las Luminarias festival occurs in the village of San Bartolomé de Pinares in Spain. People ride horses through bonfires in order to rid the beasts of sin, purify them, and to give them protection for the coming year. Oh, yes… they cheat… they douse the horses in water before riding them through the fire. The locals build around 20 bonfires; around a hundred horses and riders take part. Don’t try this at home…

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28 October 2017. From the Russian Web… Raisin Weekend at St Andrew’s in Scotland

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I saw this image on the Russian web (on vK, to be exact). Unlike Anglo Americans, Russians take an active interest in the world and know much about it. This image is of the latest “Raisin Weekend” at St Andrew’s University in Scotland. It’s supposedly #3 in the UK rankings, but many believe that it isn’t as snobbish as the Oxbridge colleges are. Indeed, many of the Oxbridge colleges are inferior institutions tacked onto the university… much like the Catholic college attached to Oxford where Prince George (Mariya Vladimirovna’s idiot son) earned a “gentleman’s C” (that is, a failure for anyone else). The following is taken from the Wikipedia article:

Raisin Weekend celebrates the relationship between the Bejants/Bejantines (First-Year students) and their respective Academic Parents. in St. Andrews’ tradition, the Parents guide and mentor the newbies in their time at University. Tradition says that students went up to study with a sack of oatmeal and a barrel of salt-herring as staple foods to last them a term. Therefore, anything more exotic was a luxury. In return for the guidance from academic parents, a further tradition sprang up of rewarding these “parents” with a pound of raisins. Since the 19th century, the giving of raisins transformed into the giving of a more modern alternative… such as a bottle of wine. In return for the raisins or equivalent present, the “parents” give their “children” a formal receipt (the Raisin Receipt) composed in Latin. Over time, this receipt progressively became more elaborate and often humorous. They write the receipt on anything and the Bejant/Bejantine must carry it everywhere on the morning of Raisin Monday until midday.

Raisin Weekend occurs annually. Affairs often begin with a tea party (or similar) thrown by the “mothers” and then a pub-crawl or house party led by the “fathers”. It’s common for several academic families to combine in the latter stages of the revels. At midday, all the First-Years gather in the Quad of St Salvator’s College to compare their receipts and also to be open to challenge from older students who may look for errors in the Latin of the receipt (an almost inevitable occurrence). Upon detection of such errors, the bearer may be required to sing the Gaudie. In recent years, the gathering culminated in a shaving-foam fight. Raisin Weekend also became synonymous with binge drinking and a certain amount of humiliation of “academic children”, commonly involving embarrassing costumes or drinking games. The University Students’ Association provides a special First Aid hotline for Raisin Weekend.

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26 November 2015. Happy Thanksgiving From Us to You

Dozhinki (Harvest Thanksgiving) celebration in Belarus

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Today is American Thanksgiving… the rest of the world already had Thanksgiving… usually, it occurs around the Harvest (as it does in Canada, occurring in October). That’s so that events can take place outdoors; people set up tables in the yard and feast outside. It’s a festival of thanks for the harvest, so people take the first-fruits to the church for blessing (and distribution to the poor afterwards). Thanksgiving didn’t begin with the English Puritans… it’s an ancient and venerable holiday, known to all peoples.

Have a wonderful day with your family and friends…

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Putin Hails Traditionalism as Core of Russian National Identity

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On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin touted traditionalism as the heart of the Russian national identity; lamenting threats like globalisation and multiculturalism, the drive for a “unipolar world”, and the erosion of Christian values… including an exaggerated focus on the rights of sexual minorities. addressing several hundred Russian and foreign officials, scholars and other public figures at a Kremlin-backed conference in northwestern Russia, Putin said, “Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without the moral norms that’ve been shaped over millennia, inevitably, people would lose their human dignity”. In a speech and question-answer session lasting over three hours at the 10th annual meeting of the so-called Valdai Club, broadcast live on Russian television and news websites, Putin lambasted “Euro-Atlantic countries” where “any traditional identity, including sexual identity, is rejected. Their policy equates families with many children with same-sex families, belief in God with belief in Satan. Any minority’s right to be different must be respected, but the right of the majority mustn’t be questioned”. Putin shifted toward conservative rhetoric ever since returning to the Kremlin for a third time in 2012, after a four-year term as prime minister. Regularly, he’s promoted traditional values in public speeches… a move that political analysts saw as an attempt to rally his conservative core constituency in the face of growing public discontent and a slowing economy. Many of the liberal values criticised in his speech are associated with the urban middle class that was a driving force behind large-scale anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow after controversial parliamentary elections in late 2011.

19 September 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://www.en.rian.ru/russia/20130919/183591728/Putin-Hails-Traditionalism-as-Core-of-Russias-National-Identity.html

Editor’s Note:

Caveat lector! The article uses the words “conservative” and “liberal” in their Russian meaning. That is, “liberal” means anti-traditional Neoliberalism, which INCLUDES laissez-faire crapitalism, so-called “libertarianism”, and individualism. On the other hand, “conservative” means the philosophy of Graf Stolypin and the Church, NOT the fantasies of the US Republican Party, Fox News, and the National Review. I’d mention that many leftists are more “conservative” than most righties… all that you need to see are the many towns wrecked by “investors” pulling out for areas willing to “deregulate”. That’s NOT Conservative with a large “C”, kids. Socialists are more conservative than the “conservatives”… who woulda thunk it…

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