Tag Archives: Christopher Gruver

Holi — Festival of Colors

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FL15-04-blog

Flowers 2015 wall calendar by Christopher Gruver

My favorite holiday I’ve never celebrated is Holi, which is celebrated in India on the full moon of Phalguna (March 6 in 2015). It’s a spring festival during which people splash each other with colored, scented water or throw colored dyes at each other. It’s a rowdy time when the genders can mingle, and so can people of different social classes. A popular Holi drink is milk, flavored with spices, and also sometimes infused with hashish. Continue reading →

Lent — Ash Wednesday to Easter

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Flowers 2015 wall calender featuring photographs by Christopher Gruver

Few of my friends understand my affection for Lent (those 40 days of deprivation observed by Catholics and many Christian denominations between Ash Wednesday and Easter), but I tell them I appreciate Lent because it’s a seasonal holiday. The word “Lent” itself comes from the same root word as “lengthen” and refers to the hours of daylight that grow longer during the season of spring. Lent is a time of rapid, visible, and dramatic growth in the natural world: “the force,” as Dylan Thomas puts it, “that through the green fuse drives the flower.” So why not ally with this powerful force and use its energy to make changes in your life? Continue reading →