Today is Christmas Eve in Armenia, a public holiday. Each year, Armenians enjoy a series of holidays from January 1st to January 6th bridging the period between the New Year and Armenian Christmas.
Right at the start of the 4th century, Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. This meant the customs of festivals developed independently from the influence of Rome. One upshot of this was that Armenia chose the date of January 6th for the birth of Christ, rather than switching to the December 25th date later observed in most countries.
An Armenian Christmas Eve tradition is to eat fried fish, lettuce, and boiled spinach. The spinach is eaten in honor of the Virgin Mary, who, according to legend, had a meal of spinach on the evening before Jesus’ birth. While there is a recipe called ‘Spinach Mother Of Christ’ you won’t find the recipe in the Bible and some historians claim that there is no evidence for Spinach being part of the diet in that part of the world at that time, so we may be looking at some early form of marketing and branding by medieval spinach growers.
Just don’t
OOPS!!!
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of Chris Stein co-founder and guitarist of the new wave band Blondie. In 1973 Stein became the guitarist of the Stilettos and began a romantic relationship with Debbie Harry, one of the singers. Blondie scored five UK No.1 singles including the 1979 UK & US No.1 single ‘Heart Of Glass’ and the 1978 worldwide No.1 album Parallel Lines. Stein is also an accomplished photographer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU
Comments