Portal:Holidays

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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, which contains many important holidays in American culture. (Full article...)

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Kwanzaa is a week-long Pan-African festival primarily honoring African-American heritage. It is observed from December 26 to January 1 each year, almost exclusively in the United States of America. Kwanzaa consists of seven days of celebration, featuring activities such as candle-lighting and pouring of libations, and culminating in a feast and gift-giving. It was created by Ron Karenga, and first celebrated from December 26, 1966, to January 1, 1967. Karenga calls Kwanzaa the African American branch of "first fruits" celebrations of classical African cultures.

It is unclear how many people celebrate the holiday. According to a marketing survey conducted by the National Retail Foundation in 2004, Kwanzaa is celebrated by 1.6% of all Americans (about 13% of all African-Americans), or about 4.7 million. In a 2006 speech, Karenga asserted that 28 million people celebrate Kwanzaa. He has always maintained it is celebrated all over the world.

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Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was a famous leader of the American civil rights movement, a political activist, and a Baptist minister. In 1964, King became the youngest man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter. In 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a United States holiday, only the fourth Federal holiday to honor an individual. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. King's most influential and well-known public address is the "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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: flickr, Stuart Yeates
Catalonian Sun Goddess from the Hogmanay Street Party, Edinburgh, 2005.

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WikiProjects

Holidays
Religion
Festivals
Sociology
Mythology
Travel and Tourism

Major topics

Religious festivals: Buddhist festivals - Christian festivals - Islamic festivals - Neopagan holidays - Hindu festivals - Jain festivals - Jewish holidays - Roman festivals

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:


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