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 (late November to January 1), which contains many important holidays in American culture. (Full article...)

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Mother's Day is a holiday honouring mothers, celebrated (on various days) in many places around the world. Mothers often receive gifts on this day. Mother's Day is a strange time of year for mail in many countries. In 1973, mail delivery through the U.S. Postal Service was delayed for eight days because of the amount of mail. Telephone networks are also at their busiest on Mother's Day. Mother's Day is the number one holiday for flowers purchased throughout the year.

Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship — which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus — was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (March 15) to March 18. The Romans also had another holiday, Matronalia, that was dedicated to Juno, though mothers were usually given gifts on this day.

Selected biography

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