Two holidays this week

[YankeyMCC]

On Monday we marked "Evacuation Day" here in metro Boston. But relatively view people were given the day off, pretty much just city, state workers.

Today is the xian holiday of Good Friday and pretty much everyone has it off.

One marks the day we forced out an occupying force. One marks a day in the myth of one, albeit predominate religion, where their god is nailed to a cross.

And this major city with a large private corporate base including many financial institutions largely shuts down on the second holiday, the day marked in the myth off. :eyes:

Those poor persecuted xians.

[Deep13]

1. I know it. Hey lets give them a hand and pry their god off that wooden thing.

Some osteopathic surgery and a few months in the sack and he'll be as good as new. I bet they'll really appreciate that. 'Course, they'd be pretty much screwed without their pagan sacrifice and following resurrection.

[displacedtexan]

2. I prefer to call him a demi-god.

"'Demigod' is meant to identify a person whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human. The biblical Nephilim, descendants of fallen angels and mortal women, could be considered demigods."

I like my mythology old school.

[Warpy]

3. The NYSE is closed for them, too

They're all so horribly persecuted in this country.

[frogmarch]

4. Body piercing saved their lives,

according to xians. That's why Good Friday is such a big deal to them.

Ugh.

[onager]

5. Make that THREE holidays!

Though of course, Off-Brand Religions don't count in One Nation Under Jesus.

But here in Egypt, Thursday was a national holiday--the Birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. Your Atheist Holiday Critic must note that this one doesn't come close to the exuberance, gluttony and materialism of the Western world's annual Baby Jesus Birthday Bash. The only difference I saw was that the local mosque ranters went on longer than usual with their tirades during the Prayer Calls.

For me, it meant an easier ride to work since schools and many businesses were closed and traffic was light. My Egyptian driver was pretty annoyed that he didn't get the day off, though he knew this already. The whole Egyptian Holiday thing has become almost a game between us. He helpfully reminds me of every Egyptian holiday, and I tactlessly remind him that we are working on the holiday and he can thank our Egyptian bosses for that, not me. Since No-God knows I like a day off as well as anybody.

Usual Irrelevant Cultural Note: The next big Egyptian holiday is Sham Al-Nessim, the first day of spring, a celebration which owes absolutely nothing to Ranting Prophets and dates all the way back to Pharonic times.

The Arabic phrase literally means "smelling the breeze." Egyptians celebrate it by going on family picnics, where they smell more than the spring breeze. The traditional nessim dishes include onions and umpteen kinds of dried, smoked and apparently fermented fish called feksheesh. I try to be as culturally polite as possible, but ain't no way I'm touching that stuff. Every year during the celebration, quite a few people get food poisoning from eating ill-prepared servings of it.

Oh, and part of this spring celebration involves a very strange and exotic Egyptian ritual: coloring eggs!

[YankeyMCC]

6. Fermented fish

...it's surprising how many cultures seem to have some version of a fermented fish dish...that is one food combination - fermentation and seafood - that holds absolutely no allure for me :)

And yeah there are probably many more holidays this week due to the start of spring, frankly those cultural or nature based celebrations make a lot more sense to me.

And of course I'm not complaining about the day off, the juxtaposition of Evacuation day and Good Friday this year just irked me this time around enough to need to let out a little steam in the form of my OP. :)

And PLEASE don't stop with what you're calling "Usual Irrelevant Cultural Note" - it's always interesting to read about your experiences in Egypt.

[enlightenment]

7. Hey now -

I did my "good friend" duty and ate Lutefisk. If I can eat something that will destroy sterling silver, the least you can do is gag down a forkful of feksheesh - which sounds like it might be a wonderfully onomatopoeiac (not sure that's a word spelled that way) name for that particular dish . . .

Coloring eggs for the holiday must've taken off everywhere. One of the first "egg hunts" I recall participating in took place in Ueno Park (Tokyo). It was sponsored by JASDF (the Japanese Air Force). Very pretty eggs but just a tad bizarre, even to my 9 year old brain, to be poking around a Shinto shrine for easter eggs!

[frogmarch]

8. feksheesh might be onomatopoeiac?

:rofl:

Fek! Sheesh! That tastes awful! :puke:

I lived in Tokyo when I was a young too. When I was 5, my playmates and I thought a Shinto shrine near our school's playground would make an ideal playhouse, and we crawled in and set up housekeeping. Wow, did we get in trouble! The Shinto priests chased us out with brooms, and our parents were furious at us too. I'll never forget it.

[enlightenment]

9. Can't say I ever did that!

I did swim under the divider at the local bathhouse and discovered - at the age of 10 - the difference between men and women. I thought it looked hysterically funny, all those gently bobbling manly bits in the water. When I came up for air it caused quite a stir - my long hair was the giveaway that I was on the wrong side. Our cook, who had brought me to the baths, gave me absolute HELL for that stunt; fortunately, we'd only been there six months or so and my Japanese wasn't good enough to catch all of it. Unfortunately, her English was good enough to provide a translation. And yes, she told my parents. :(

It was an excellent place to grow up - when I wasn't on restriction . . .!

[onager]

10. Sorry, I goofed...

Looks like the more accepted spelling of the fish is fiseekh. I was writing it as I heard it. Or something.

Wikipedia describes the fish as "a putrid salted Grey Mullet," which sounds about right.

If you're vacationing in Egypt and get tempted to try some fish, a travel tip:

I pass thru a bunch of little farm villages twice a day, and almost every day of the week one of them is having a weekly market.

Folks are often selling salted fish out of homemade reed baskets. These fish are pulled out of the local irrigation canals, where it is fairly common to see dead donkeys or horses floating.

So I would skip that.

For REALLY fresh fish, just stop by Alexandria. Walk along the Corniche, the big street by the sea, and local fishermen will come up and try to sell you fish they just pulled out of the Mediterranean. You'll also see a gaggle of hopeful cats roaming around behind the fishermen, waiting patiently for dinner.

There are some big fish markets down by Ras el-Tin. (Which you'll want to see anyway. One of King Farouk's palaces is there.) You can see the fish brought out of the sea, cleaned, and fried right in front of you. Makes a great snack while you're walking around!

[TZ]

11. Here is some more yummy fish which I know I will see soon:Gefilte Fish!

Yummy for Passover(:puke: )
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://shopuncleharrys.dukestores.duke.edu/index.php%3Fmain_page%3Dproduct_info%26products_id%3D4102&h=450&w=600&sz=36&hl=en&start=4&sig2=NzsH5en7TVuijn7b66dBBw&um=1&tbnid=nmo6Ik3wIorKMM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&ei=NgXlR-aaLabSggLD-tjdBQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3DGefilte%2BFish%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

My mom loves this stuff (its basically pickled whitefish/carp) so she buys it and usually ends up just about the only person eating it...:eyes:

[enlightenment]

12. Now that's my idea of fish -

the longer it's been out of the water, the less appealing it is to me. I can't eat the live lobsters they sell in the seafood restaurants because I tend to develop relationships with them whilst waiting for a table . . . but I've never grown fond of a fish and have no problem watching them go from net to plate. Fish that's been preserved in any way is simply wrong. Unnatural. Desperation food only. *shudder*

You should write a traveller's guide to Alexandria, onager - the "how to visit like you live there" guide. I'd buy it!