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This book for families and teachers helps you celebrate festivals from cultures from all over the world. This resource guide for celebration introduces a selection of 26 Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh festivals.
With a history now stretching back four decades, Pacific festivals of Aotearoa assert a multicultural identity of New Zealand and situate the country squarely within a sea of islands. In this volume, Jared Mackley-Crump gives a provocative look at the changing demographics and cultural landscape of a place frequently viewed through a bicultural lens, Pākehā and Māori. Taking the post–World War II migrations of Pacific peoples to New Zealand as its starting point, the story begins in 1972 with the inaugural Polynesian Festival, an event that was primarily designed as a Māori festival, now known as Te Matatini, the largest Māori performing arts event in the world. Two major moments of festivalization are considered: the birth of Polyfest in 1976 and the inaugural Pasifika Festival of 1993. Both began in Auckland, the home of the largest Pacific communities in New Zealand, and both have spawned a series of events that follow the models they successfully established. While Polyfests focus primarily on the transmission of performance traditions from culture bearers to the young, largely New Zealand–born generations, Pasifika festivals are highly public community events, in which diverse displays of material culture are offered up for consumption by both cultural tourists and Pacific communities alike. Both models have experienced a significant period of growth since 1993, and here, the author presents a thought-provoking and wide-ranging analysis to explain the phenomenon that has been called a “Pacific renaissance.” Written from an ethnomusicological perspective, The Pacific Festivals of Aotearoa New Zealand incorporates lively first-person observations as well as interviews with festival organizers, performers, and other important historical figures. The second half of the book delves into the festival space, uncovering new meanings about the function and role of music performance and public festivity. The author skillfully challenges accounts that label festivals as inauthentic recreations of culture for tourist audiences and gives both observers and participants an uplifting new approach to understand these events as meaningful and symbolic extensions of the ways diasporic Pacific communities operate in New Zealand.
This book is an English translation of a study of the highly organized public mass celebrations to glorify the state/party/leader of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century, which originated in and enjoyed their longest run in the Soviet Union.
This study explores the development of ancient festival culture in the Greek East of the Roman Empire, paying particular attention to the fundamental religious changes that occurred. After analysing how Greek city festivals developed in the first two Imperial centuries, it concentrates on the major Roman festivals that were adopted in the Eastern cities and traces their history up to the time of Justinian and beyond. It addresses several key questions for the religious history of later antiquity: who were the actors behind these adoptions? How did the closed religious communities, Jews and pre-Constantinian Christians, articulate their resistance? How did these festivals change when the empire converted to Christianity? Why did emperors not yield to the long-standing pressure of the Church to abolish them? And finally, how did these very popular festivals - despite their pagan tradition - influence the form of the newly developed Christian liturgy?
Booklets in this first series: On which days was Christ crucified and resurrected? Can we know the year of Christ's crucifixion? Does the Bible’s Creation account accord with scientific discovery? Was Christ crucified on a cross? Why should families symbolise the church and kingdom of God? Who should take the bread and wine, and when? Can we be born again during this earthly life? What annual festivals should Christians celebrate? Is there a Holy Spirit God-person? What is the true gospel? When does the law end for a Christian? Should Christians celebrate a weekly Sabbath? Each booklet in this series focuses on one theme that is also covered more briefly in the 350-page book “Israel and the Covenants in New Testament Times”. Each study's conclusions come from what the Bible reveals consistently, answering all the objections the writer has heard, to leave nothing even apparently contradicted by any other Bible text. By this means they confirm that the booklet provides rock-solid Bible truth and that the Bible is truly the word of God. Despite this, as the booklets' series title suggests, these conclusions are typically unexpected – a primary aim in writing and sharing them. If you find anything unpalatable, please recognise that God is the real author of what these booklets show and the author little more than a researcher and collator of the subject matter. Therefore, if you the reader cannot refute what a booklet in this series asserts directly from the Bible (surely nobody can), please give God your thanks and praise for allowing you to come to the truth from Him. [“Israel and the Covenants in New Testament Times” may be ordered on-line in the UK from Amazon.co.uk or at good bookshops, and internationally from Amazon.com, in paperback or Amazon Kindle format: A4, 352 pages (Paragon Publishing: ISBN-10: 1-908341-68-8, ISBN-13: 978-1-908341-68-6.)]
Granet’s original work delves deep into the religious and spiritual customs of ancient China by analysing their festivals and songs from the Book of Odes including the original Chinese script. This translation, originally published in 1932, aimed to present Granet’s observations to a wider English readership by omitting the Chinese characters and providing an in-depth insight into one of the most important early civilisations. This title will be of interest to students of Asian studies.
A contemporary overview of festival activity based on over 30 international case studies. It demonstrates how the nature of festivals crosses borders, how they are a recognisable and growing part of societal and cultural delivery around the globe and that their impacts, economic, social and cultural are a major driver in their development.
Throughout the world, the number of festivals has grown exponentially in the last two decades, as people celebrate local and regional cultures, but perhaps more importantly as local councils and other groups seek to use festivals both to promote tourism and to stimulate rural development. However, most studies of festivals have tended to focus almost exclusively on the cultural and symbolic aspects, or on narrow modelling of economic multiplier impacts, rather than examining their long-term implications for rural change. This book therefore has an original focus. It is structured in two parts: the first discusses broad issues affecting music festivals globally, especially in the context of rural revitalisation. The second part looks in more detail at a range of types of festivals commonly found throughout North America, Europe and Australasia, such as country music, jazz, opera and alternative music festivals. The authors draw on in-depth research undertaken over the past five years in a range of Australian places, which traces the overall growth of festivals of various kinds, examines four of the more important and distinctive music festivals, and makes clear conclusions on their significance for rural and regional change.
This book endeavors to uncover the underlying reasons behind the celebration of various festivals within the Hindu community. Many of us joyfully partake in these festivals without a comprehensive understanding of their origins and significance. Throughout the year, numerous festivals are observed, but this book focuses on some of the most renowned festivals celebrated in India and the Indian subcontinent. Hindus are deeply religious individuals who faithfully adhere to their customs and rituals. However, in matters of religion, faith often takes precedence over wisdom in India. This book delves into the multifaceted reasons behind the celebration of these festivals, exploring why ancient sages and seers designated these special days for their descendants and elucidating the benefits of adhering to rituals on these auspicious occasions.
