Holidays rss

Different demographics in different regions shaping Holidays with American style.

Kitschy, Kitschy Cute: Interpreting Old Valentine’s Day Vases

Kitschy, Kitschy Cute. Throughout the Fifties and early Sixties, before they were sent in cheap papier-mâché and then expensive colored-glass vases,  sweethearts sent Valentine’s Day flowers in highly-breakable ceramic ones with that once-ubiquitous label “Made in Japan.” How many ways… Read More ›

The White House New Year’s Day Reception: Good Riddance to a Miserable Tradition

Resolutions, college football bowl games, parades, gym renewals, and January first’s first-born child: New Year’s Day customs give people hope, happiness or distraction. Swollen feet, pneumonia and confrontation do not. Which explains the silent death of the legendary White House… Read More ›

Old-School New Year’s Day Food: From the South, North or Midwest – its Imported

Holidays, as celebrated throughout the United States, are closely tied to annual feasts of traditional foods. Thanksgiving has its turkey and pumpkin pie, Christmas its goose, Hanukah its fried potato pancakes, St. Patrick’s Day is usually marked with plates of… Read More ›

Sex Lives of the Pilgrims: Girls Gone Wild, Gay Guys, An Orgy, Incest & Goodwives Chasing Native Men

“Puritanism,” said legendary wit H. L. Mencken, “is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Clearly, Mencken never pawed through the court record of Plymouth Colony‘s first generations of Pilgrims. In them, one finds eye-popping details of every… Read More ›

The Four Best Presidential Pumpkin Pies: From the first Adams and Johnson, Ike & Reagan

When it comes to Presidents, the quality of political policy is entirely inconsistent with that of their pumpkin pie.   There’s not even a preference for pumpkin over mince, for example, among those regularly rated as either the “best” (like… Read More ›