May Day

May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the German festival of Walpurgis Night.

May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the unfarmable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular, and often raucous, celebrations.

As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or became merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint's Day.

In the twentieth century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.

The earliest May Day celebrations were held in pre-Christian times, with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the German speaking countries. It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane. Many pagan celebrations were abandoned or became Christianized during the process of conversion in Europe. A more secular version of May Day continues to be observed in Europe and America. In this form, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May. Various Neopagan groups celebrate - reconstructed to varying degrees and versions - these customs on May 1st.

The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1st was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25th (now June 21st) was Midsummer.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is observed as Mary's month, and in these circles May Day is usually a celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this connection, in works of art, school skits, and so forth, Mary's head will often be adorned with flowers in a May crowning. Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the giving of "May baskets," these are small baskets of sweets and/or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbours' doorsteps.

St George's Day

In recent years the popularity of St George's Day appears to be increasing gradually. BBC Radio 3 had a full programme of St George's Day events in 2006, and Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, has been putting the argument forward in the House of Commons to make St George's Day a public holiday.

In early 2009, Mayor of London Boris Johnson spearheaded a campaign to encourage the celebration of St George's Day. Today St George's day may be celebrated with anything English from morris dancing to a Punch and Judy show. In 2011, a campaign to make St. George's Day a public holiday in England began on the UK government's e-petition website. If 100,000 signatures are obtained before the deadline in August 2012, the matter will be opened for debate in the House of Commons – so get signing quick!.

A traditional custom on St George's day is to wear a red rose in your lapel, though this is no longer widely practised. Another custom is to fly or display the St George's Cross flag in some way - pubs in particular can be seen festooned with garlands of St George's crosses on 23^rd April. It is customary for the hymn Jerusalem to be sung in cathedrals, churches and chapels on St George's Day, or on the Sunday closest to it. Traditional English foods and drink (e.g. afternoon tea) may also be consumed.

There is a growing reaction to the recent indifference to St George's Day. Organizations such as English Heritage and the Royal Society of Saint George (a non-political English national society founded in 1894) have been encouraging celebrations. There have also been calls to replace St George as patron saint of England, on the grounds that he was an obscure figure who had no direct connection with the country. However there is no obvious consensus as to whom to replace him with, though names suggested include Edmund the Martyr Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, or Saint Alban, with the latter having topped a BBC Radio 4 poll on the subject.

Enjoy your St George's Day!

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Outsourcing

Outsourcing, in its early days, seemed possible only by larger companies which farmed out many low end business processes. Since then, outsourcing has become more of a standard practise than a possible option to be considered. Apart from the cost savings, outsourcing is seen as a strategic move that can allow businesses to gain a competitive advantage.

It certainly has opened up opportunities for organizations to utilize skill and expertise that they normally would not be able to access without large investments. It has also become a saviour to new and small businesses which quite often have to work within a tight and limited budget.

At the lower end of the spectrum, outsourcing back office jobs such as data entry, customer support and payroll processing have helped organizations save a staggering amount of money. Now, there are service providers across the world who specialize in simple back office services to high end services like manufacturing design and legal outsourcing, to name a few.

Before people decide to outsource, it is important to define what specific goals are to be met. Lower costs are probably the prime goal of outsourcing. You can get work done at a fraction of the cost that you would have to spend locally, while getting better quality as well. Finding skilled people is one of the biggest challenges faced by companies today, not to mention the investment required to train employees and the attendant infrastructure required, which can rapidly drain funds. Outsourcing frees companies from these hassles by providing access to skilled people at lower costs, with the additional benefit of not having the burden of managing them directly.

Outsourcing not only brings cost advantages but can also improve the efficiency of business operations. If your business goals are properly aligned with the deliverables in outsourcing, productivity and efficiency are bound to increase.
When certain functions are outsourced, companies also distribute or do away with the risks associated with running that particular function. For instance, if payroll management is eating up your operational time and money, outsourcing it to a payroll services provider gives you the freedom to focus your concentration on other core activities of the business.

Customer service is paramount to any organization. Through outsourcing you can service your customers faster, provide better quality and decrease turnaround time.
Since outsourcing takes care of the skills necessary to run a particular business process, your business is much more flexible in investing in key resources. Instead of worrying about hiring people for your back office operations, you can focus on getting resources to grow your core competencies.

Why not outsource your laundry to Iron Maids.  We offer free collection and delivery on all dry cleaning, washing and ironing.  Just call 01622 870111.

It's pretty much common knowledge that Easter is a Christian celebration of Christ's rising, but this period also has pagan origins. Where did the coloured eggs, cute little bunnies, baby chicks, and lilies come from? They are all symbols of rebirth.

 
The ancient Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, and Hindus all believed the world began with an enormous egg, thus the egg as a symbol of new life has been around for thousands of years. The particulars may vary, but most cultures around the world use the egg as a symbol of new life and rebirth. A notation in the household accounts of King Edward 1st of England showed an expenditure of eighteen pence for 450 eggs to be gold leafed and coloured for Easter gifts.

The first book to mention Easter eggs by name was written five hundred years ago. Yet, a North African tribe that had become Christian much earlier in time had a custom of colouring eggs at Easter. Long hard winters often meant little food, and a fresh egg for Easter was quite a prize. Later, Christians abstained from eating meat during the Lent season prior to Easter. Easter was the first chance to enjoy eggs and meat after the long abstinence.

Some European children go from house to house begging for Easter eggs, much like Halloween trick or treaters. Called “Pace Egging”, this comes from the old word for Easter, Pasch. Many old cultures also attributed the egg with great healing powers. It is interesting to note that eggs play almost no part in the Easter celebrations of Mexico, South America, and Native American Indian cultures. Egg-rolling contests are a symbolic re-enactment of the rolling away of the stone from Christ's tomb. The decoration of small leaf barren branches as Easter egg trees has become a popular custom in the United States since the 1990s.

Have a wonderful Easter - from us all at Iron Maids. 

April Fools

For over 600 years – 620 to be exact – many parts of the world have been associating the 1st April with foolishness.  The earliest association was in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales and  for the past six centuries people have been playing practical jokes on each other and pranks on each other.
 

You have to be quick off the mark in some parts of the world as, like the UK, the joking stops at noon and any tricks after noon make the prankster the “April Fool”, but in many parts of the world, including the US and Ireland the joking lasts all day. In France and Italy, children stick paper fish on each other’s backs and shout “April Fish”.

The jokes can be elaborate and have involved TV programs – think of the much respected  BBC program Panorama, which fooled legions of viewers with its infamous “spaghetti tree” hoax in 1957. See the link:

100 Best April Fool Jokes of all Time

This blogger has a distinct memory of the Daily Mirror in the 70s reporting on the need for the Coldstream Guards to keep trimming their bearskins hats which continued growing due to being worn on warm heads *blushes slightly and hangs head in shame*…….. 

But why April 1^st?  Many believe that it coincides with the Vernal Equinox and many societies would celebrate this “new year” around the beginning of April.  It was only when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1562 that New Year was celebrated on 1^st January and some people just refused to accept this huge change and such traditionalist were referred to as “April Fools” and were routinely teased and ridiculed

Other parts of the world also have celebrations of fun and tomfoolery.  The Romans had Hilaria, the end of Winter celebration, on 25^th March.  In Denmark, May 1 is known as "Maj-kat", meaning "May-cat", and is also a joking day. May 1'st is also celebrated in Sweden as an alternative joking day. When someone has been fooled in Sweden, to disclose that it was a joke, the fooler says the rhyme "April April din dumma sill, jag kan lura dig vart jag vill" (April, April, you stupid herring, I can fool you to wherever I want") for April 1st jokes………catchy eh? 

In Iran they play jokes on each other on the 13th day of the Persian New Year which falls on either the 1^st or 2^nd of April.  This day has been celebrated as far back as 536 BC and is known as Sizdah Bedar and is the oldest prank-tradition in the world still alive today; this fact has led many to believe that April Fools' Day has its origins in this tradition. 

However it all began and where is all began is shrouded in dispute but wherever All Fools Day is celebrated it brings with it lots of fun – mainly in the planning! – some red faces and the one day when perhaps the News is not to be taken too seriously!  Happy Fooling!

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