Christmas Joys

Whats Up With the History of Easter Eggs?
By Mike Lombard

Before the egg became Easter tradition, it was associated with pagan rituals during the rite of Spring festivals. It was a symbol of the universe for the Romans, Gauls, Chinese, Egyptians, Persians and others. From ancient times down to modern day, the egg has been dyed, painted and exchanged.

The Polish Invasion of the History of Easter Eggs

The first Polish legend to make a note of combines folklore and Christian thinking during the Easter celebration that it well documented and expresses an unusual take on the history of Easter eggs. It is a very endearing story involving the Virgin Mary and some pretty remarkable eggs. Mary is said to have given eggs to the soldiers at the cross. She asked for them to be less cruel and wept. It is said that the tears of Mary fell onto the eggs, spotting them with dots in fantastic techni-colors. Which in my opinion is a fantastic explanation of the history of Easter eggs and why we do with them what we do.

The second Polish legend is of Mary Magdalen. This legend says that Mary Magdalen went to the sepulcher to anoint the body of Jesus. Mary took a basket of eggs with her as a snack. It is said that when she arrived at the sepulcher, she uncovered the eggs to discover that the shells had taken on a rainbow of colors.

English History of Easter Eggs Traditions

People of England have been coloring and decorating their Easter eggs since way back in the middle ages. The records for the house of Edward I, in the year 1290, have listed an expense for four hundred and fifty eggs to be gold-leafed and colored as Easter gifts which would make sense as it is not far off from what we do today.

Faberge and Russia’s Contribution to the History of Easter Eggs

The most famous version of Easter egg comes from the well known goldsmith Peter Carl Faberge. The Russian Czar, in 1883, commissioned Peter Faberge to create a special Easter gift for the Empress Marie.

One of Faberge’s first eggs was a fantastic design with an outer shell made out of enamel - needless to say it would be priceless today. When the outer egg was opened, it revealed a smaller golden egg. The smaller egg when opened, revealed a chicken and the Imperial crown in replica. Does this sound familiar? It is just what we do today when we put goodies inside our Easter eggs.

When the Czar saw Faberge’s eggs he instantly fell in love with it (and who could blame him) and immediately ordered Faberge to create more and deliver them to the Empress every Easter. This custom was continued by the Czar’s son Nicholas II and enabled the creating of 57 specialized Easter eggs. This delivery of eggs at Easter time was quickly adopted and continues today to shape the history of Easter eggs.

Because of the special treatment given to decorated eggs at Easter, it became practice to seek out these special eggs. This is how the traditional Easter egg hunt began. This is also why eggs hidden during the celebration are colorful and sometimes decorated and filled with gifts.

What you just learned about the history of Easter eggs is just the beginning.

Click below to get the full story and all the details.

http://www.eastervacationfun.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Lombard
http://EzineArticles.com/?Whats-Up-With-the-History-of-Easter-Eggs?&id=2112473

Easter Speeches - The Key to Making Sure No-One Falls Asleep During Yours
By Lisa Russell

This Easter make your (or your child’s) speech stand out from the rest.

Forget talking about about chocolate eggs, and the real meaning of Easter. Wait before you protest, just think for a moment, how many other people will be talking about eggs and Jesus? Lets be honest, nearly everyone else. If you want to stand out from the crowd and keep you audience awake

your Easter Speeches need to be different.

The best way to do that is to talk about the little known Easter facts.

You know the type, the ones people might have a vague knowledge about but don’t know the whole story. It is a bit like talking about the black sheep of the family, everyone wants to know the juicy details but they are too afraid to ask.

Using the example of the simnel cake, I will show you how to create good informative Easter Speeches in just a few steps.

• Start with a good opening line to grab your audience’s attention., something like… ‘Do you know why there are only 11 balls of marzipan on top of a simnel cake’

When you see them looking shocked because you haven’t mentioned Easter Eggs and confused because they haven’t a clue what a simnel cake is you know you’ve caught their attention. Now you have to keep it.

Keep them interested by:

• explaining what a simnel cake is. This will be a wonderful opportunity to include visual aids, such as a picture of a simnel cake or even better one ready to eat
• answering the question about the eleven marzipan balls
• reliving the story of daughters returning home with the cake during lent
• and any more facts you have found out.

Conclude your presentation with a

• short summary such as

‘so now we know the history of the simnel cake, and all the effort the daughters went to in making it…

• and a call to action

…we should try it to see if it really was worth it. Who wants a piece of cake?’

Use this approach and choose a little known topic, your audience will be rewarding you with applause not snores.

Simnel cake is just one of many little known topics found at Easter Speeches

Lisa Russell is the owner of http://easy-free-speeches.com A web site dedicated to providing speech writing help and lots of speech topics in an easy to understand format. Whatever type of speech you are creating, you are sure to find something that will help you create a memorable speech that is more than just words.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_Russell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Easter-Speeches—The-Key-to-Making-Sure-No-One-Falls-Asleep-During-Yours&id=1912971

Ways to Beat Christmas Stress
By CD Mohatta

Christmastime is a wonderful time of year to relax with family and rejoice with friends. The holiday should give people a chance to unwind from everyday life but it usually makes them much more stressed. In order to enjoy the holiday, it is important to take time to actually think about what the holiday means and what the true meaning of the season is. Then think about how you want to celebrate it. Because the birth of Christ is the reason for the season, it is important to remember that as you plan your celebrations and not spend too much on the commercialization shown by merchants, who advertise all the newest and latest products that are sure to please at Christmas.

There are simple tips to avoid, or at least manage stress during the Christmas season that you can try. Since one of the biggest stressors is spending money or going into debt, then it’s important to figure how to make spending less of a financial burden. One way to avoid going into debt when you shop, is to decide to use only money that you have put away for Christmas. The easiest way to SAVE is to join a Christmas club or use automatic withdrawal for savings. These two ways for saving money JUST for Christmas is the first step to beat the stress of financial ruin during the holidays. So, SAVE to avoid the biggest stress.

Next, you need to examine who you actually buy presents for and who you WANT to buy for, then trim down the number on your list. Trying to buy for everybody you know is the biggest hassle of gift giving, but it wouldn’t be if you had a realistic list that you followed. First, decide who absolutely MUST be on the list then make agreements with each of them on a spending LIMIT. This will allow you to budget how much you will spend by knowing HOW MANY PEOPLE you will buy gifts for and how much MONEY you will spend on each gift, according to your spending limit that was already set.

Plan ahead. Save money and cut back expenses. Evaluate the number of gifts that you purchase and decrease it. Set a limit on each gift to be purchased. Add the cost of holiday extras, like Christmas dinner for the family, phone calls for merry wishing and higher utilities for Christmas decorations. Don’t forget to add money for charities, church, and the homeless. These are great ways to beat Christmas Stress so you can enjoy the spirit and excitement of Christmas with family and friends rather than stressing about money, presents, and commercialism. Remember the true meaning of Christmas is Christ’s birth and spend more time and money on peace, goodwill, sharing and caring than on a shopping frenzy. Enjoy the holidays with family and friends without stress.

Planning properly can fight all the stresses that come with stress. I have a friend of mine who has everything planned much before Christmas. On Christmas Day he has all the time to be with family and friends and relax. This is the clue to stress free Christmas.

Social network users, click for myspace comments such as compliments, cool comments, love, flirty, birthday, holidays, religion, funny, cute, etc. You can also use myspace graphics If you love Christmas, click Christmas Myspace Layouts to add to your profile.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CD_Mohatta
http://EzineArticles.com/?Ways-to-Beat-Christmas-Stress&id=794070

Booking Christmas Cruise Tips
By Yasin As’ari

Traveling on a cruise vacation seems to be more and more popular tradition among American and Canadian, and it maybe more than 80% of the cruise ship passengers are American and Canadian. They travel almost in every season and every cruise destinations, especially in summer time and Christmas holidays. Almost all cruise ship lines fully booked two or three months before they set sailed. Some people booked it five or six month prior to cruising time.

Making the last minute booked probably is one of efficient way to get cheaper tickets price, but off course this will affect you to get smoothest way and comfortable time of your whole cruising experience.

If you have any special request or your are traveling for certain celebration like birthday or anniversary or, even for, honeymoon, make sure you write it down on the form when you booking the cruise, and tell your travel agent to fax it directly to its cruise coordinator or customer service office. This form will inform the ship management about the conformation status of the passengers. And this effort will be very helpful to get the cruise arrangement exactly as you wish.

Every day, during the cruise you will find a lot of papers on your cabin desk. Make sure you get the daily program and read it, because this program informs you about all the daily ship activities, and ship facilities that you can work out of them.

At the end of the cruise, your room steward will distribute questioner papers, luggage tags and some papers with the information about disembarkation process. If you follow the whole process according to the instruction, the cruise management provides you with some worth door prize, and surely, this is something to do with your disembarking process condition.

To those people who have a plan to spend their Christmas holiday on cruise or taking a Christmas cruise. Make sure that you book it as earlier as possible, and tell your travel agent to organize it, and make everything is clear. Sometimes, bad things happen to the passengers only because a lack of information and less communication between you and your travel agent when you do the reservation, for instant the passenger booking confirmation status, you think you have confirmed everything to your travel agent when you booked the cruise, but infect, the cruise ship management put your name in the waiting list. Of course, this will ruin everything you have planed with, such as the dinner time too early or too late for you, dinner table location is not in the position up to your request, your room type and its facilities are not the same as what you expected. So it is important for you to make a double checked confirmation.

Bon voyage and marry Christmas

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Yasin_As’ari
http://EzineArticles.com/?Booking-Christmas-Cruise-Tips&id=1489786

What is Easter 2009 All About
By Mike Lombard

This means of course that there is going to be a lot of shopping that will be required to ensure that it is a happy Easter for all the people at your table. Unlike birthdays, the Easter festival is not as frantic but that does not mean that there is not a lot to bear in mind.

It is important however, just like any other holiday, to sit down and plan all your ingrediants before you hit the stores. You may also be planning on purchasing lots of what is easter goodies and gifts for you family - but don’t worry, the stores are not going to be too busy like they are at Christmas. As you know, Easter is not as big as Christmas or as commercialized so the rush just simply wont be there. However, this doesn’t mean that you can leave it to the last minute to plan.

Shopping Ahead Of Time

When planning your Easter there is no such thing as being over prepared. If you leave your shopping to the last minute then your bound to forget stuff or be left with the dregs in the shopping isles. To avoid this, you will want to make a list of all the things you need and refer to it often. If you can do this successfully then you will not only get what you need in plenty of time, but this will also help you to stick to your budget. Armed with your list, you will leave the stores with only what you need and not lots of impulse purchases that will kill your budget.

It’s a shame you cannot purchase your Easter food items 12 months in advance, but what’s stopping you from stocking up on Easter decorations, or Easter arts and crafts for next year. We all know that Easter decorations and stuff will be so much cheaper a week or two after Easter. This means that you can get yourself all new decorations and Easter arts and crafts at a great discount off the price and be 100% prepared for Easter 2010. But remember people, just because those what is Easter decorations are cheap - don’t mean you need them all.

Finally! The whole unbiased truth about Easter 2009 exposed. You owe it to yourself to visit What Is Easter 2009 and get the facts today.
For cool tips on making Easter this year count go to:
http://www.eastervacationfun.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Lombard
http://EzineArticles.com/?What-is-Easter-2009-All-About&id=2074466