Tu B'shvat

Happy New Year!

Sort of...

Today is the Jewish New Year of the Trees. It coincides with the flowering of the almond trees in Israel.

The name is derived from the Hebrew date the holiday falls on. It is the 15th day of the month Shvat. The Tu part of the name is for the 15, which is represented by the numbers tet vav (9 and 6), since it is against Jewish tradition and rabbinic laws to use the letter numerals for 10 and 5 together. This rule is because these (yud for 10 and hey for 5) together from the abbreviation for the name of God, which is strictly forbidden. Instead, 9 and 6 are used to represent 15.

The customs for this date are to plant trees and eat dried fruit and nuts (especially figs, dates, raisins, carob, and almonds). In the Kabbalistic tradition, the order in which you eat the fruits and nuts is important. Eating them in the proper order is said to create a connection with the Tree of Life, and thereby closer to God. With each serving of fruit or nuts, you are supposed to drink white and red wines or grape juices, progressing from white to red with a drop of white in it.

The proper order is:

• Fruits and nuts with hard, inedible exteriors and soft edible insides, such as oranges, bananas, walnuts, and pistachios.
• Fruits and nuts with soft exteriors, but with a hard pit inside, such as dates, apricots, olives and persimmons.
• Fruit that is eaten whole, such as figs and berries.

So, the first holiday that I could in some way celebrate without much difficulty. I went to this site and ordered some supplies. Most of them were for later holidays, and will not be talked about until later in the year. One thing I got, however, was a fruit and nut tin. It was designated kosher, so that was good, and had some hazelnuts and a variety of fruit in it. I took this to my job and shared with coworkers, while explaining what the celebration was. I was not fortunate enough to get the right mix to eat the Kabbalistic seder, but that's a possibility for next year if I plan ahead better.

Also, I avoided eating pork, despite the fact that work was offering some really tasty looking pork chops. It seemed fitting.

Jesus Christ and Reading Lists

So, today was a bit of a big day for me. No holidays this week, but I did keep busy with the project. I went shopping for some books to supplement my celebrations. Prior to this, I had a handful of books of religion. Now I have a lot of books of religion.

My collection includes:

• Bhagavad-Gita
• Buckland's Book of Witchcraft
• Dhammapada
• I Ching
• King James Bible
• Koran
• Megilah
• New Oxford Annotated Bible (for the Apocrypha)
• Pocket Book of Zen
• Principia Discordia
• Satanic Bible
• Tao Te Ching
• The Analects of Confucius
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Religions
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eastern Philosophy
• The Teachings of Buddha
• Tibetan Book of the Dead
• Torah
• Upanishads

Books I still need are:

• Chang Yung
• Hsiao Ching
• Kojiki
• Li Ching
• Mishnah
• Shih Ching
• Shinto
• Shuh Ching
• Talmud
• Any other books I am unaware of so far...

So, yeah, decent start but far from enough. I seems that it is difficult to find non-Christian religious books in a mainstream bookstore. I am sure I could special order somewhere, but I have not really had the inclination to do so yet. I likely will, at some point.

In other, more entertainment than religious news, I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar tonight. It included the original actor to play Jesus in the movie version back in the 70's. Man, does he still have a great voice. A little disconcerting to see a young cast with a 60 year old Jesus, but it was still a great show. One of my all time favorite musicals, and full of a lot of my favorite songs. Now I have to pull out my CDs of the original cast to listen to. Also want to find a copy of that movie. That was my introduction to the show so it has a special place in my heart.

One thing that I have always been struck by is how in this show, Judas is not really a bad guy. He has good intentions, that sort of spiral out of his control. It is very interesting, and has influenced my own personal view of Judas and his part in the story in general. I also find that this play is much like Shakespeare's Othello in that the play is named after one character (Jesus/Othello) but really more about a different character (Judas/Iago).

Anyhow, great fun.

Makar Sankrant

So, first holiday of the year. This is a Hindu festival recognizing the transition of the sun from one celestial sign (Sagittarius) to another (Capricorn). According to the article I read, most Hindu holidays are based on the lunar calendar, but since this is a sun festival it is based on the position of the sun and therefore remains on January 14 all the time.

There are a handful of beliefs tied in with this holiday. One is that this is the day Surya (the Sun) visits the house of his son Shani(Saturn). The father and son do not get along, but take this one time every year to see each other. As such, it is a representation of the father/son bond. It is also said that this was the day that Vishnu ended the terror caused by the Asuras (Hindu deities commonly portrayed as demons). He buried their heads after finishing them off. This makes the day one of ending negativity as well.

Traditional celebration of this day seems to entail cleaning out the old the day before, followed by focusing on the positive and new. The handing out of sweets also looks to be important. Brothers traditionally give gifts to their married sisters as a sign of filial love. The most common form of celebration is prayer to Surya and flying colorful paper kites.

My form of celebration was pretty poor. I did not have access to a kite, nor the time to fly one. I also do not have a married sister. I pretty much stayed up later than normal so I could watch the sun rise. Not the best start for the year, but this was a celebration that not only snuck up on me, but also tends to not work with my work schedule of swing/graveyard shifts.

Hope the rest of the year goes a little better.

A Beginning

Welcome one and all to a year long experiment I am attempting for 2010. I decided that for the entire year, I will be celebrating as many of the major religious holidays for as many major religions as I possibly can.

A bit of background is in order to explain this. You see, i am by nature not a religious person. I was once Christian, in the sense that I occasionally went to church (Episcopal, if you care to know) and believed in God. When I hit my teen years, I began to question my beliefs (as many teenagers do). I just never really came back to a belief in God. For a long time, I considered myself an atheist, but as I have grown older this has shifted more to agnostic. In recent years this shift in belief has once more eased up to become a belief in some higher power, but not in any single religious faith.

Despite this lack of "faith," I have had a deep fascination of religion for a long time. I have done a little bit of comparing of different faiths. Nothing deeper than a surface glance. Along the lines of a Complete Idiot's Guide to Religion. A quick glance at everything, without a deeper understanding.

A few years back, I saw the movie "The Order." This movie, for those unaware of it, deals with a Catholic priest who ends up encountering a man who claims to be a Sin Eater. Sin Eaters, according to the movie, are able to take the sins of others onto themselves to ensure passage of the sinner into Heaven. The act of taking the evils of one person, so they may find redemption despite the unusual edicts of the church intrigued me. I liked the idea of allowing an otherwise good person to be forgiven a sin that (in my mind) should not be a sin to begin with. Mainly, I was thinking of things along the lines of homosexuality. I see no reason a person should not be allowed eternal bliss because of a fluke of their birth. So, I went online and researched sin eating. It turns out, the historical examples were more for medieval villages without access to a priest than the movie version. But, in my searching, I found out about the Universal Life Church. This is a California-based church that offers ordainment online. So, I got myself ordained. partially as a joke, but also so that I could indeed forgive sins and get people into heaven.

Over the years, I have also bought a handful of books regarding religions and philosophy. A bible here, book by Plato there. Along the way, i took a couple philosophy classes (mostly Ethics and Logic related). Philosophy of Religions was probably the most interesting, and most pertinent to this project. Most of these books have been piled up, and left unopened for years.

Jump ahead to the end of 2009. I was trying to come up with a good resolution for the new year. I always try to usual "work harder, save money, eat better" stuff everyone tries. I also always fail at it within days. So, I thought that this year I would try something different. I would do something fun, interesting, and lacking in guilt if I happen to fail. Thinking on my book collection and eclectic tastes, I decided I would try a two part resolution. I would celebrate every religious holiday, and I would try to write about it all. This would jump start my stalling writing hobby as well as enrich me by teaching me about the beliefs and practices of others.

This blog will be my journal of what i learn during this journey, as well as anything that may tie in with my study of religion over the coming year. Who knows, I may actually learn something about myself.

As a final note, the religions I am officially looking to are: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, and (just for fun) Discordianism. All holidays I have chosen were listed on GodWeb. I only chose the holidays listed for the year that specifically had links to a page describing the holiday in more detail. I chose all of the linked holidays, regardless of significance (the thought being that if it had a page of its own, it was important and if it did not have such a page it was worth ignoring for now). All information I am using for celebrations is gleaned from Wikipedia I do realize the fallibility of this source, but it is convenient.

I am open to any communications from actual practitioners of the religions I have chosen (as well as any I have neglected) as to any information I have missed. I especially welcome information on the reasons for the celebration as well as proper rituals and practices to go with the holiday or festival.