Monday, April 28, 2008

Celebrating Sham El-Nessim, a spring festival

Today is an Egyptian non-Christian, non-Muslim holiday; Sham El-Nessim, which literally means ‘sniffing the breeze’. It’s a day related to the vernal equinox and has been observed in Egypt and around the world since ancient times to mark the beginning of spring. The festival is traditionally a celebration of life and rebirth, and entailed in the past everything from fertility rites to the consumption of aphrodisiacs.

Apparently current Egyptians, Christians and Muslims alike, spend this day picnicking with family and friends in green areas, consuming dyed eggs, spring onions, lettuce (all well—known aphrodisiacs) and Fiseekh, a smelly salted fish from which many a celebrating Egyptians, as it appears, obtain food poisoning.

So far, we have celebrated this holiday by enjoying a lazy and quiet morning, restoring our strength. Tomorrow school resumes and it’s all downhill - or uphill depending on if you’re a glass-is-half-full or glass-is-half-empty type of person - until the end of the semester; school, teaching, student exams, Taekwondo, baseball games, choir concerts, swimming, social events, thesis finalizations, article deadlines and home leave preparations. You can never be too prepared.

For more information on Sham El-Nessim, see this article.
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Lovely Lady of La Leche, most loving mother of the Child Jesus, and my mother, listen to my humble prayer. Your motherly heart knows my every wish, my every need. To you only, His spotless Virgin Mother, has your Divine Son given to understand the sentiments which fill my soul. Yours was the sacred privilege of being the Mother of the Savior. Intercede with him now, my loving Mother, that, in accordance with His will, I may become the mother of other children of our heavenly Father. This I ask, O Lady of La Leche, in the Name of your Divine Son, My Lord and Redeemer. Amen.