New Years Eve, I Dont Get it

[aps45819]

... from a friend that recently moved to Louisiana;

Bon fires and all fire works (including commercial) are legal in most parts of LA and we weren't excluded. Shortly after sunset the fires could be seen leaping 20 feet into the air with glowing embers reaching several times that height. Groups of families teamed up in every neighborhood to purchase hundreds of dollars of explosives. One such group was at the beginning of our street, another larger group convened at the cul-de-sac three doors down, and several others were clustered in our next door community. Additionally, individual families throughout had their own arsenals. By 7:30PM the pyrotechnics were in full fury and, of course, peaked at midnight. It reminded me of a WWII movie with nearby fires casting an eerie glow in the night sky, firecrackers sounding like intense small arms fire, whistling rockets like falling bombs, and the larger items like cannon fire. Heavy smoke clouded the streets like a dense fog and the smell of black powder filled the air. The intensity ranged from a distant rumble to ear splitting explosions as the bright colors of each detonation reflected off of the low cloud cover. The dogs were sent into severe trauma and now require extensive psychotherapy. We were finally able to put our heads on our pillows around 1:30 AM.

My reply was I'm coming down to visit next year

[thurley42]

I think it's sad that some people don't know how to have fun.

[aps45819]

Originally Posted by thurley42

I think it's sad that some people don't know how to have fun.

How can you not have fun with explosives?

[StoneThrower]

Originally Posted by Toxick

Alrighty then - you go ahead and wish people a Blessed Feast of the Brit Milah of Jesu.




I'm going to celebrate something way less ..... foreskin oriented.
Like throwing out my calendar, and putting up a new one. And of course trying to remember that I have to write 2013 on my checks now.

That sounds pretty wacked and pagan too. Who ever thinks up such crazy stuff, worse yet who is stupid enough to buy into it.

[Toxick]

Originally Posted by StoneThrower

That sounds pretty wacked and pagan too.

Can you be more specific.

[aps45819]

Originally Posted by Toxick

Can you be more specific.

Writing checks

It's an obsolete pagan ritual no longer practiced in the modern world

[Toxick]

Originally Posted by aps45819

Writing checks

It's an obsolete pagan ritual no longer practiced in the modern world

That's what I thought.





I keep my checks in a ram's hollowed out skull.

[Radiant1]

Originally Posted by aps45819

Writing checks

It's an obsolete pagan ritual no longer practiced in the modern world

Originally Posted by Toxick

That's what I thought.





I keep my checks in a ram's hollowed out skull.

[Bonehead]

Was like the wild west according to my son, gunfire all over the place.

Don't people understand how stupid and careless blindly firing into the air is ?

The bullet is going to land somewhere at terminal velocity.

[Starman3000m]

The Jewish (Biblical) Perspective

Months of the Jewish Year

The "first month" of the Jewish calendar is the month of Nissan, in the spring, when Passover occurs. However, the Jewish New Year is in Tishri, the seventh month, and that is when the year number is increased. This concept of different starting points for a year is not as strange as it might seem at first glance. The American "new year" starts in January, but the new "school year" starts in September, and many businesses have "fiscal years" that start at various times of the year. Similarly, the Jewish calendar has different starting points for different purposes.

The names of the months of the Jewish calendar were adopted during the time of Ezra, after the return from the Babylonian exile. The names are actually Babylonian month names, brought back to Israel by the returning exiles. Note that most of the Bible refers to months by number, not by name.

The Jewish calendar has the following months:

Hebrew English Number Length Civil Equivalent

Nissan 1 30 days March-April

Iyar 2 29 days April-May

Sivan 3 30 days May-June

Tammuz 4 29 days June-July

Av 5 30 days July-August

Elul 6 29 days August-September

Tishri 7 30 days September-October

Cheshvan 8 29 or 30 days October-November

Kislev 9 30 or 29 days November-December

Tevet 10 29 days December-January

Shevat 11 30 days January-February

Adar I (leap years only) 12 30 days February-March


Adar
(called Adar Beit in leap years) 12
(13 in leap years) 29 days February-March

The length of Cheshvan and Kislev are determined by complex calculations involving the time of day of the full moon of the following year's Tishri and the day of the week that Tishri would occur in the following year. After many years of blissful ignorance, I finally sat down and worked out the mathematics involved, and I have added a page on The Jewish Calendar: A Closer Look, which may be of interest to those who want a deeper understanding or who want to write a Jewish calendar computer program. For the rest of us, there are plenty of easily accessible computer programs that will calculate the Jewish calendar for more than a millennium to come. I have provided some links below.
Note that the number of days between Nissan and Tishri is always the same. Because of this, the time from the first major festival (Passover in Nissan) to the last major festival (Sukkot in Tishri) is always the same.

Source:
Judaism 101: Jewish Calendar