{"id":12,"date":"2013-12-19T12:43:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T12:43:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-03-31T14:34:03","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T14:34:03","slug":"12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/2013\/12\/19\/12\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the End of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"Newspapers provide windows into daily life throughout history.&nbsp; Digital newspapers allow us to easily track how people celebrated the end of the year, across many years and many miles.\n\nThe Denison Press article, <a title=\"Winter Solstice Period of Many Ancient Rituals\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth328651\/m1\/10\/zoom\/?zoom=4&amp;lat=5906&amp;lon=1331&amp;layers=BT\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Winter Solstice Period of Many Ancient Rituals,&#8221;<\/a> explains, &#8220;The Winter Solstice, when the sun swings toward the earth once more, has been celebrated as a festival of some sort by the various peoples of the earth since, and even prior to, the recording of history.&#8221;&nbsp; In Texas, these rituals range from stately and glamorous to community-building to just plain peculiar.<\/p>\n\n<ul><li>Early Texans celebrated Christmas while living in a warmer climate during the winter months. The <a title=\"November 24, 1838\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth48021\/m1\/3\/zoom\/?%20%20q=Christmas&amp;zoom=5&amp;lat=3063.5&amp;lon=4368.5&amp;layers=BT\" target=\"_blank\">November 24, 1838, issue<\/a> of the Telegraph and Texas Register reveals that Velasco celebrated with daytime horse races that concluded with evening masked balls over a series of five days.<\/li><li>Soldiers stationed at Fort Hood mulled over their New Year&#8217;s resolutions in the <a title=\"New Year's Resolutions\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth255211\/m1\/4\/zoom\/?zoom=4&amp;lat=4690&amp;lon=4419&amp;layers=BT\" target=\"_blank\">December 21, 1973, issue<\/a> of the Fort Hood Sentinel.&nbsp; Quitting smoking seemed to be the most frequent resolution for folks that year.<\/li><li>Two decades later, from Houston, the <a title=\"Rice Thresher\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth246527\/m1\/15\/zoom\/?zoom=4&amp;lat=2585.5&amp;lon=1775&amp;layers=BT\" target=\"_blank\">Rice Thresher <\/a>advertises the &#8220;Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa celebration for the Second Annual Holiday Festival,&#8221; which would be &#8220;celebrated with buffet dinner and dessert, along with photos with Santa.&#8221;<\/li><li>Children from the town of Canadian, in the Texas Panhandle, eagerly write to Santa with their wishes, one of whom&nbsp; hopes for &#8220;a palm pilot and real beagle puppies&#8221; in the <a title=\"Letters to Santa\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth220661\/m1\/34\/zoom\/?zoom=4&amp;lat=1964.5&amp;lon=1401&amp;layers=BT\" target=\"_blank\">December 23, 2004 Canadian Reporter<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/li><li>And the University of North Texas&#8217; <a title=\"Holidaily 2007\" href=\"http:\/\/texashistory.unt.edu\/ark:\/67531\/metapth145816\/m1\/1\/\" target=\"_blank\">Holidaily 2007<\/a> poses the timeless question: Who would win in a battle of the Santas? Santa Claus or Santa Anna?&nbsp; (You&#8217;ll have to read the comic to find out!)<\/li><\/ul>\n\nHowever you celebrate the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, the Digital Newspaper Team wishes you joy!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newspapers provide windows into daily life throughout history.&nbsp; Digital newspapers allow us to easily track how people celebrated the end of the year, across many years and many miles. The Denison Press article, &#8220;Winter Solstice Period of Many Ancient Rituals,&#8221; explains, &#8220;The Winter Solstice, when the sun swings toward the earth once more, has been&#8230;  <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/2013\/12\/19\/12\/\" class=\"more-link\" title=\"Read Celebrating the End of the Year\">Read more &raquo;<\/a>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[6,27],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-history","tag-holiday_traditions_history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5tTwO-12","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/tdnp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}