Portal:Holidays

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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Easter, also known as Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection, the Sunday of the Resurrection, or Resurrection Day, is the most important religious feast of the Christian liturgical year, observed between late March and late April. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which his followers believe occurred on the third day after his death by crucifixion some time in the period AD 27 to 33 (see Good Friday). In the Roman Catholic Church, Easter is actually an eight-day feast called the Octave of Easter. Easter also refers to the season of the church year, lasting for fifty days, from Easter Sunday through Pentecost.

In Western Christianity, Easter always falls on a Sunday from March 22 to April 25 inclusive. The following day, Easter Monday, is a legal holiday in many countries with predominantly Christian traditions. In Eastern Christianity, Easter falls between April 4 and May 8 between 1900 and 2100 based on the Gregorian date. As with many other Christian dates, the celebration of Easter extends beyond the church. Since its origins, it has been a time of celebration and feasting. Today it is commercially important, seeing wide sales of greeting cards and confectionery such as chocolate Easter eggs, marshmallow bunnies, Peeps, and jelly beans.

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In Irish mythology, a leprechaun is a type of male faerie said to inhabit the island of Ireland. They are a class of "faerie folk" associated in Irish mythology and folklore, as with all faeries, with the Tuatha Dé Danann and other quasi-historical races said to have inhabited Ireland before the arrival of the Celts. Leprechauns and other creatures of Irish mythology are often associated with "faerie forts" or "faerie rings" — often the sites of ancient earthworks or drumlins. They are said to be very rich, having many treasure crocks buried during war-time. According to legend, if anyone keeps an eye fixed upon one, he cannot escape, but the moment the eye is withdrawn he vanishes.

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