The perpetual calendar

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Feb 24, 8:14 am, Cheryl wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote:
Michael Press wrote:
In article , Cheryl
wrote:
[...]
But we still lack a February holiday, unless we have a big enough
snowstorm.
February is the cruelest month.
February is the longest month. I thought US had President's Day in
February now.
/BAH
But I'm in Canada, so we don't celebrate President's Day at all,
whenever it comes. I'd make do with a 'mid-February Holiday' in honour
of nothing in particular if I could be guaranteed a break in that dreary
month.

We used to have Lincoln's Birthday on Feb 12 and Washington's Birthday
on Feb 22. A while ago, they were rolled into one movable feast.

And were declared a government holiday.

I suppose we could adopt Valentine's Day as a public holiday.

A holiday in honor of a single industry?

There is Christmas and Thanksgiving and Mother's Day and Easter.

What's significant about Mr
(formerly St) Valentine?

Oh, are you ever in trouble ;-)

/BAH

tony cooper wrote:
On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:24:18 -0500, jmfbahciv jmfbahciv@aol wrote:

Michael Press wrote:
In article , Cheryl
wrote:


[...]

But we still lack a February holiday, unless we have a big enough snowstorm.
February is the cruelest month.

February is the longest month. I thought US had President's Day in
February now.

As far as I can tell, the only employers that are closed on
President's Day are government offices, schools, and banks.

There are others.

To the
rest of the working stiffs, President's Day is just another
work-day...a busier work-day for retail employees, in fact.

For some reason, retailers think that I will be in the market for a
new refrigerator, set of pillow cases, or an automobile in honor of
President James J. Polk. Newspapers benefit from President's Day from
all of the full-page sale advertisements.

My son was shopping for new tires and found that a local tire store,
that normally offers a 25% discount on purchase of four tires, had a
President's Day sale offering of four tires for the price of three.
Was P.T. Barnum ever President?

Nope, we have one who believes he can fool all the people all of the
time. So far, it looks like he's right. :-(

/BAH

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
tony cooper writes:

As far as I can tell, the only employers that are closed on
President's Day are government offices, schools, and banks. To the
rest of the working stiffs, President's Day is just another
work-day...a busier work-day for retail employees, in fact.

It's a company holiday at HP (in the US). Our holiday calendar is

New Year's Day (or the first weekday thereafter)
Martin Luther King Day
President's Day
Memorial Day
Independence Day (or the closest weekday)
Labor Day
Thanksgiving Day and the day after
Christmas

and one "company-designated floater", typically used to make
Christmas, New Years, or the Fourth of July into a four-day weekend.
(This year it's 12/31.) Before we got MLK Day, we got a "Spring
Holiday" that always fell on Good Friday.

In the UK, they get, let's see

New Year's Day and, in Scotland, the day after
St. Patrick's Day (only in Northern Ireland)
Good Friday
Easter Monday (except in Scotland)
May Bank Holiday (May 3rd)
Late Spring Bank Holiday (May 31st)
Summer Holiday (July 12th in NI, August 2nd in Scotland)
Late Summer Bank Holiday (August 30th, not in Scotland)
Christmas Day
Boxing Day

In Australia, the ones marked as "company holidays" are

New Year's Day
Labour Day
Easter Monday
ANZAC Day (in NSW and WA)
Christmas Day
Boxing Day

There are a bunch of others on the calendar, varying by site, but it's
not clear that those are actually days off. Interestingly, Labour Day
is all over the calendar:

Mar. 7th Western Australia
Mar. 8th Victoria
May 3rd Queensland
Oct. 4th ACT, NSW, SA

I don't see it listed for the Tasmanian sites (Launceston and Hobart)

And, in Massachusetts, Patriot's Day is a requirement :-). I sure
would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when HP discovered
that Monday was almost as holy as Christmas.

/BAH

wrote:
On Feb 24, 7:54 am, jmfbahciv jmfbahciv@aol wrote:
wrote:
On Feb 23, 6:19 am, "J. Clarke" wrote:
Dunno about the rest of the world, but in the US court-ordered busing
has most kids riding the bus to school anyway
Court-ordered busing never affected a substantial fraction of US
school children (it peaked at below 5%, IIRC) and since 1980 or so has
been very limited. Post-2000, it's headed toward extinction.
Why are you assuming that kids don't use busses?

I'm not assuming that. I've re-read the above to figure out why you'd
think that, but I'm stumped.

Oh, I read "it's" as busing; you meant the forced changes in which
schools kids attended.

/BAH

Bob Myers wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote:


Well, I'm astounded. Indexing from 0 is so obviously the Right Way
that I can't imagine why anyone would do it the other way.

Oh, absolutely. Why, I see people in the stores every day,
counting out their money or the number of items they're
going to purchase, and saying to themselves "Zero, one, two..."

;-)

Especially when the clerk counts change. I'm sure Usher wouldn't
object when he gets a dollar short.

/BAH

On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:56:38 -0330, Cheryl wrote:

Chuck Riggs wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:16:08 +0000, Mike Barnes
wrote:

"Peter Duncanson (BrE)" :
On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:45:18 +0000, Mike Barnes
wrote:

snip

A religious celebration? Yes. A religious event? No, I don't think so.
That would depend on your definition and use of the word "event", in
this context.
Of course. In this context I take "religious event" to mean an event
with some specific religious significance to adherents in general, not
just to those present.

Rather than a religious event, I see the early Thanksgivings as
celebrations of a concept: religious freedom in the New World,
something the Pilgrims did not enjoy in the old one.

But somewhat influenced by harvest festivals in England.

Their desire to be isolated from all outside influences on their lives &
religion may have had an effect on the later development of the US, but
that early on, it's quite possible they were re-creating and adapting a
harvest festival to their own purposes.

Any excuse for a party.
--

Regards,

Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE

On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:15:08 -0500, "CDB"
wrote:

Chuck Riggs wrote:
"CDB" wrote:
Cheryl wrote:

snip

[I tried to explain Thanksgiving to a Haitian once]

I sometimes wonder why so many Canadian primary school teacher
seem to think that the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday should be
commemorated with colouring sheets showing pilgrim fathers in
funny hats. The turkeys I can understand, since most Canadian
households will probably serve a turkey, but those guys who came
to what is now the US on the Mayflower don't belong in our
national mythology.

It might be mainland influence. Some of my ancestors were
Americans until that earlier unpleasantness with the teabags, and
that's true for many people in Ontario and New Brunswick.

I believe tea bags came later.

I meant the freedom-fighters.

You've whoosed me.
--

Regards,

Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE

On Feb 25, 10:20*am, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:
On Feb 24, 5:04 pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

*I would like to know
what definition you would use for determining whether a group (however
heretical) was, in fact, a (heretical) Christian group.

"Heretical" _means_ they're not part of the fold. You can hope and
pray that they renounce their heresy, but until they do, they're out.

The wannabes don't get to define who belongs to the club. The
gatekeepers do.

If it's an appeal to authority, then I presume your original question
was begged. *If the "gatekeepers" assert that the Nicene Creed is
part of being Christian, then no Christian groups fail to use it by
definition. *

That would seem to be the case. (And there's a difference between
regularly reciting a creed, and accepting it as part of doctrine.
You'd be hard pressed to find a copy of the Athanasian Creed -- at
least, before internet days -- yet it sets forth the basics of, at
least, Western Christianity.)

And your Mr. Lee defines himself _out_ of Christianity by the "broader
meaning."

How so? I can see that they've defined themselves out of orthodox
Christianity by accepting a non-canonical book, but I don't know what
definition of "Christianity" you're using that rules out those
following additional books about Jesus. Unless, of course, your
definition includes necessarily following things like the Nicene
Creed, but clearly that couldn't be your definition or you wouldn't
have asked if there were Christian churches that didn't.

The various canons of Scripture (which differ slightly around the
edges) accepted by the various brands of Christianity were finalized
1700 or more years ago. No option exists within Christianity for
adding to that canon.

I had thought that those who accept other books (at least other
pre-existing books) were considered to be heretical Christians rather
than non-Christians.

Especially forgeries claimed to be found on golden plates and
translated by angels. Into a pastiche of centuries-old diction.

Or, presumably, if an archaeological site uncovered a new letter,
fully compatible with the current canon, determined by Christian
authorities to have been written by St. Paul. *Any church which added
it to their canon would becom non-Christian by your argument.

Many similar documents have been discovered in recent decades, and no
Christian church has even _considered_ adding them to the canon.

Chuck Riggs wrote:
On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:15:08 -0500, "CDB"
wrote:

Chuck Riggs wrote:
"CDB" wrote:
Cheryl wrote:
snip
[I tried to explain Thanksgiving to a Haitian once]
I sometimes wonder why so many Canadian primary school teacher
seem to think that the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday should be
commemorated with colouring sheets showing pilgrim fathers in
funny hats. The turkeys I can understand, since most Canadian
households will probably serve a turkey, but those guys who came
to what is now the US on the Mayflower don't belong in our
national mythology.

It might be mainland influence. Some of my ancestors were
Americans until that earlier unpleasantness with the teabags, and
that's true for many people in Ontario and New Brunswick.
I believe tea bags came later.

I meant the freedom-fighters.

You've whoosed me.

I suspecting he was making an allusion to the United Empire Loyalists
bringing American traditions north when they fled what was becoming the
US under the onslaught of the freedom fight...I mean, the heroic armies
and militias that won the American Rebell...American War of Independence.

Terminology for historical or political events depends so much on the
side from which you view said events.

--
Cheryl

On Feb 25, 7:31*am, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
On Feb 25, 1:27*am, " wrote:



On Feb 25, 12:16*am, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:

On Feb 24, 3:27*pm, " wrote:

On Feb 24, 2:08*am, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:

On Feb 23, 7:07*pm, António Marques wrote:

Hatunen wrote (23-02-2010 22:47):

I believe that a great many of the churches which once split away
from the church of Rome considered themselves the true catholic
chuch.

Certainly the Anglicans do. The Anglican covenant says,

"(1.1.1) its communion in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic
Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit."

Of course they do. But when it comes to self-identify, only one church on
this planet consistenty refers to itself simply as 'the Catholic Church' (it
also uses other names, namely 'the Church', and where pragmatism requires
'the Roman Catholic Church' - but the 'Roman' adds nothing, unlike 'Old' or
'Polish National' - the RC doesn't see any added value in Roman, it doesn't
contribute to the meaning with anything that wasn't there before).

Besides, until recently, no other church lived for a universal ('catholic')
vocation. Sure, many of them did have one, but not as a central structuring
element. Notice the RC was never 'the Italian Church' even when popes were
italian for centuries long.

Doesn't _every_ extant Christian church use the Nicene Creed? (With or
without the _filioque_.)

Not at all. *The Nicene creed was explicitly designed to advocate a
Trinitarian position and to brand non-Trinitarian sects (the Arians in
particular) as heretics. *It quite intentionally defines one subset of
Christianity (and not every Trinitarian sect uses the Nicene Creed--
Quakers, for instance, explicitly reject using any creed).

Some examples of modern-day non-Trinitarians, who would reject the key
Nicene doctrinal tenets:

Then they are, by definition, not Christians.

The wannabes don't get to say who is a member of the club; the
gatekeepers do.

FWIW, after looking at Merriam-Webster, the OED, and Wikipedia, all of
the above seem to fit squarely within the definition of Christianity.

I'll certainly state my biases ahead of time, and say that although I
was raised in the Catholic tradition all of the churches I described
seem to sit clearly within the bounds of what "Christian" means--even
when used by Catholic priests. *I intentionally tried to avoid any
faiths where I thought there was even a remote chance of controversy
(e.g. Mormonism, Jews for Jesus, Unitarians, etc).

I'd suggest that if you actually have a definition of Christianity
that excludes Quakers, Adventists, the various Apostolic Churches and
Churches of Christ, Isaac Newton, John Locke, and the like that you
should state it and explain why it's superior to what most recognized
lexicographers have settled on.-

Lexicographers have the power to determine who is a Christian?

No. They do attempt to catalog what English-speakers* mean by words.
Dictionaries are normally a pretty good starting point when attempting
to figure out what a word means. They are occasionally wrong--hence
my asking for your alternative and an explanation as to why it's a
better definition.

FWIW, the Catholic resources I've looked at don't seem to limit their
use of "Christian" to those who believe in the Nicene Creed. Hardon's
_Modern Catholic Dictionary_ says:

Christian: A person who is baptized. A professed Christian also
believes in the essentials of the Christian faith, notably in the
Apostles' Creed.

(and continues on to define a "Catholic Christian")

*Or speakers of whatever language they're cataloging