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  • =?UTF-8?Q?Dita_e_Ver=c3=abs_=2814_March=29?=

    From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 14 12:30:48 2025
    "an Albanian spring festival and pagan holiday....for the beginning of
    the spring-summer period."
    Celebrated officially on 14 March in Albania, unofficially in other
    countries where there are Albanians.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dita_e_Ver%C3%ABs

    Alb dita 'day', e 'of', verë 'summer'.

    But it's not summer yet, even in Albania!
    Note the above slightly slidy wording.
    Verë looks as if it might be from Latin vēr 'spring' (PIE *wes-).
    Could have been a semantic shift, I guess.
    Modern Alb has another word for 'spring' - sustë.

    Further into this unfamiliar territory I will not venture.

    Oh yes, it's also (according to my upstairs calendar):

    Purim (a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish
    people from annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid
    Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim

    Holi (Hindu festival of colours, love and spring -- it's the one where
    they throw coloured powders all over each other)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi

    Neither of these seems to be a national holiday in any country, but they
    will be celebrated by Jews resp. Hindus in many parts of the world.

    Interestingly, they are both precisely defined as extending from evening
    (on the 13th) to evening (14th).

    /ObSci.lang Etymological notes:

    "Purim is the plural of the Hebrew word pur (loan from Akkadian puru)
    meaning "lot".Its use as the name of this festival comes from Esther
    3:6–7, describing the choice of date:

    6: [...] having been told who Mordecai's people were, Haman plotted
    to do away with all the Jews, Mordecai's people, throughout the kingdom
    of Ahasuerus.
    7: In the first month, that is, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth
    year of King Ahasuerus, pur—which means "the lot"—was cast before Haman concerning every day and every month, [until it fell on] the twelfth
    month, that is, the month of Adar.

    [That is, an act of divination to determine an auspicious day on which
    to carry out his wicked plan.]


    --------------

    Holi is supposed to be from Holika, the name of an asuri in Hindu
    mythology, elsewhere called a "demon"...Oh, read the story.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holika

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  • From Jeff Barnett@21:1/5 to Ross Clark on Thu Mar 13 22:35:55 2025
    On 3/13/2025 5:30 PM, Ross Clark wrote:
    "an Albanian spring festival and pagan holiday....for the beginning of
    the spring-summer period."
    Celebrated officially on 14 March in Albania, unofficially in other
    countries where there are Albanians.

    I'm curious: What does "pagan" mean in this context? And in general,
    what image or reaction is the word supposed to conjure in general?
    --
    Jeff Barnett

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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Jeff Barnett on Fri Mar 14 19:03:48 2025
    On 14/03/2025 5:35 p.m., Jeff Barnett wrote:
    On 3/13/2025 5:30 PM, Ross Clark wrote:
    "an Albanian spring festival and pagan holiday....for the beginning of
    the spring-summer period."
    Celebrated officially on 14 March in Albania, unofficially in other
    countries where there are Albanians.

    I'm curious: What does "pagan" mean in this context? And in general,
    what image or reaction is the word supposed to conjure in general?

    My guess is that Dita e Verës is believed to date from before the
    Albanians were Christians -- or Muslims. (People say that about a lot of present-day festivals or customs; it's not necessarily true.) I don't
    think it has anything to do with how the day is celebrated now.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jeff Barnett@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 14 10:31:46 2025
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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Jeff Barnett on Sat Mar 15 09:00:19 2025
    On 15/03/2025 5:31 a.m., Jeff Barnett wrote:
    On 3/14/2025 12:03 AM, Ross Clark wrote:
    On 14/03/2025 5:35 p.m., Jeff Barnett wrote:
    On 3/13/2025 5:30 PM, Ross Clark wrote:
    "an Albanian spring festival and pagan holiday....for the beginning
    of the spring-summer period."
    Celebrated officially on 14 March in Albania, unofficially in other
    countries where there are Albanians.

    I'm curious: What does "pagan" mean in this context? And in general,
    what image or reaction is the word supposed to conjure in general?

    My guess is that Dita e Verës is believed to date from before the
    Albanians were Christians -- or Muslims. (People say that about a lot
    of present-day festivals or customs; it's not necessarily true.) I
    don't think it has anything to do with how the day is celebrated now.

    My question was prompted by our (current v. past) usage of the word
    "pagan"; not by curiosity about the festival. Since these threads are attended to by people with cultural interests in addition to linguistic background and interests, I thought it would be a good place to ask.

    Sure. I was responding to your first question, suggesting what the
    Wikipedia writer that I quoted meant by it ("in this context").

    As for the broader use of that word, I agree that modern usage has gone
    way beyond the original sense of "non-Christian" or "not belonging to
    one of the Major Religions". The first dictionary I picked up (Concise
    Oxford, 8th ed, 1990) had a sense: "identifying divinity or spirituality
    in nature; pantheistic'. I think that extension of meaning has gone
    along with a value inversion, where "pagan" can now be seen as a
    positive quality.

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