Eastern Meadowlark

Introduction

A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often also observed as public holidays in religious majority countries. Some religious holidays, such as Christmas, have become secularised by part or all of those who observe them. In addition to secularisation, many holidays have become commercialised due to the growth of industry.

Holidays can be thematic, celebrating or commemorating particular groups, events, or ideas, or non-thematic, days of rest that do not have any particular meaning. In Commonwealth English, the term can refer to any period of rest from work, such as vacations or school holidays. In American English, the holidays typically refers to the period from Thanksgiving to New Year's (late November to January 1), which contains many important holidays in American culture. (Full article...)

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Burning Man is an eight-day-long festival organized by Black Rock City, LLC, under the guidance of founder Larry Harvey. The festival is held annually and ends on the American Labor Day holiday in September. The festival takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, 90 miles (150 km) north-northeast of Reno. Though the specific location on the playa changes from year to year, the location has been quite constant in recent years. The temporary city is an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. The event takes its name from the ritual of burning a large wooden sculpture of a man on the sixth day.

The annual event now known as Burning Man began on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco and burned an eight foot (2.4 m) tall wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. The inspiration for burning these effigy figures has been explained by Harvey as "a spontaneous act of radical self-expression."

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In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of erotic love. He is equated with the Greek god Eros, and another one of his Latin names Amor. In popular culture Cupid is frequently shown shooting his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of Valentine's Day. The most common representations of cupid include a chubby baby with wings and a bow and arrow. Sometimes the arrow has a heart for its tip. Cupid is most often seen nude or diapered. Cupid is sometimes blindfolded, symbolising the figure of speech, "love is blind."

Things you can do

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Check Category:Holidays articles needing attention
Cleanup : see Holiday Cleanup List
Expand : List of included articles, Place the {{WikiProject Holidays}} banner on all article talk pages that fall within the scope of this project, Add them to the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Holidays/Articles
Infobox : Make a Holiday Infobox for each article
Stubs : Review Category:Holiday stubs, Review stubs and add {{Holiday-stub}} to holiday articles
Update : Holidays in the upcoming Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries
Wikify : Check to see if title follows standardized format, Add the Holiday portal template to the See also section of each article, Add appropriate subcategory classification and remove unnecessary super categories to allow for an efficient category tree
Other : Template_talk:Infobox_holiday#Things_to_do; assess all the unassessed articles; review the automatically generated worklist; review recent changes for inclusion in the project

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Credit: Thomas Nast
One of the earliest depictions of the modern Santa Claus by Thomas Nast, which appeared on the cover of the January 3, 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly. At this time, the image of Santa Claus had not yet merged with that of Father Christmas. This version was likely based on the Belsnickel ("Furry Nicholas"), a mythical being who visited naughty children in their sleep. This Santa was a man dressed up handing out gifts to Union Army soldiers.