AUTUMN

CANADIAN WRITER JAY INGRAM INVESTIGATES THE MYSTERY OF WHY

LEAVES TURN RED IN THE FALL.

One of the most captivating natural events of the year in many areas throughout North
America is the turning of the leaves in the fall. The colors are magnificent, but the
question of exactly why some trees turn yellow or orange, and others red or purple, is
something which has long puzzled scientists.
Summer leaves are green because they are full of chlorophyll, the molecule that
captures sunlight converts that energy into new building materials for the tree. As fall
approaches in the northern hemisphere, the amount of solar energy available declines
considerably. For many trees – evergreen conifers being an exception – the best
strategy is to abandon photosynthesis* until the spring. So rather than maintaining
the now redundant leaves throughout the winter, the tree saves its precious resources
and discards them. But before letting its leaves go, the tree dismantles their chlorophyll
molecules and ships their valuable nitrogen back into the twigs. As chlorophyll is
depleted, other colors that have been dominated by it throughout the summer begin to
be revealed. This unmasking explains the autumn colors of yellow and orange, but not
the brilliant reds and purples of trees such as the maple or sumac.
The source of the red is widely known, it is created by anthocyanins, water-soluble
plant pigments reflecting the red to blue range of the visible spectrum. They belong to a
class of sugar based chemical compounds also known as flavonoids. What’s puzzling
is that anthocyanins are actually newly minted, made in the leaves at the same time as
the tree is preparing to drop them. But it is hard to make sense of the manufacture of
anthocyanins – why should a tree bother
making new chemicals in its leaves when it’s already scrambling to withdraw and
preserve the ones already there?
Some theories about anthocyanins have argued that they might act as a chemical
defense against attacks by insects or fungi, or that they might attract fruit-eating birds or
increase a leaf’s tolerance to freezing. However there are problems with each of these
theories, including the fact that leaves are red for such a relatively short period that the
expense of energy needed to manufacture the anthocyanins would outweigh any anti-
fungal or anti-herbivore activity achieved.* photosynthesis: the production of new
material from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
It has also been proposed that trees may produce vivid red colorsto convince
herbivorous insects that they are healthy and robust and would be easily able to mount
chemical defenses against infestation. If insects paid attention to such advertisements,
they might be prompted to lay their eggs on a duller and presumably less resistant
host. The flaw in this theory lies in the lack of proof to support it. No one has as yet
ascertained whether more robust trees sport the brightest leaves, or whether insects
make choices according to color intensity.
Perhaps the most plausible suggestion as to why leaves would go to the trouble of
making anthocyanins when they’re busy packing up for the winter is the theory known as
the ‘light screen’ hypothesis. It sounds paradoxical, because the idea behind this
hypothesis is that the red pigment is made in autumn leaves to protect chlorophyll, the
light-absorbing chemical, from too much light. Why does chlorophyll need protection
when it is the natural world’s supreme light absorber? Why protect chlorophyll at a time
when the tree is breaking it down to salvage as much of it as possible?
Chlorophyll, although exquisitely evolved to capture the energy of sunlight, can
sometimes be overwhelmed by it, especially in situations of drought, low temperatures,
or nutrient deficiency. Moreover, the problem of oversensitivity to light is even more
acute in the fall, when the leaf is busy preparing for winter by dismantling its internal
machinery. The energy absorbed by the chlorophyll molecules of the unstable autumn
leaf is not immediately channeled into useful products and processes, as it would be
in an intact summer leaf. The weakened fall leaf then becomes vulnerable to the highly
destructive effects of the oxygen created by the excited chlorophyll molecules.
Even if you had never suspected that this is what was going on when leaves turn red,
there are clues out there. One is straightforward: on many trees, the leaves that are
the reddest are those on the side of the tree which gets most sun. Not only that, but the
red is brighter on the upper side of the leaf. It has also been recognized for decades
that the best conditions for intense red colors are dry, sunny days and cool nights,
conditions that nicely match those that make leaves susceptible to excess light. And
finally, trees such as maples usually get much redder the more north you travel in the
northern hemisphere. It’s colder there, they’re more stressed, their chlorophyll is more
sensitive, and it needs more sunblock.
What is still not fully understood, however, is why some trees resort to producing red
pigments while others don’t bother, and simply reveal their orange or yellow hues. Do
these trees have other means at their disposal to prevent overexposure to light in
autumn? Their story, though not as spectacular to the eye, will surely turn out to be as
subtle and as complex.
HALLOWEEN HISTORY

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival

of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly
in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France,
celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of
the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human
death. Celts believed that on the night before the New Year, the boundary
between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of
October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of
the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the
presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic
priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent
on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of
comfort during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the
people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.
During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal
heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re -lit their hearth fires, which they had
extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them
during the coming winter.

ALL SAINTS' DAY

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in
honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was
established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival
to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May
13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands,
where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D.,
the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s
widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic
festival of the dead with a related, church -sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires,
parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All
Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the
night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to
be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New

England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was
much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the
American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to
emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events
held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell
each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and
mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn
festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in
the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new
immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing
the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween
nationally.

HISTORY OF TRICK-OR-TREATING

Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in

costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that
eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that
on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband
by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
 In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a
holiday more about community and n eighborly get-togethers than about ghosts,
pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both
children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties
focused on games, foods of the season and festive c ostumes.
Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take
anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of
these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones
by the beginning of the twentieth century.
THANKSGIVING DAY HISTORY

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving

2021 occurs on Thursday, November 25. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and
Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast that is
acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the
colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by
individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War,
that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be
held each November.
THANKSGIVING AT PLYMOUTH

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England,
carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new
home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by
the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After
a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped
anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the
mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower
crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly
known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the
ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious
disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original pas sengers and crew lived to see
their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore,
where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Native American who
greeted them in English.

Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a

member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea
captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his
homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened
by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees,
catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers
forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for
more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony
between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful,
Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of
the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief
Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving” —although the
Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted
for three days. While no record exists of the first Thanksgiving’s exact menu,
much of what we know about what happened at the first Thanksgiving comes
from Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow, who wrote:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we
might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits
of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help
beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other
Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us,
and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men,
whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed
five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor,
and upon the Captain and others. And although it is not always so plentiful, as
it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want,
that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared usin g
traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims
had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621,
the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a
hallmark of contemporary celebrations

THANKSGIVING BECOMES A NATIONAL HOLIDAY

Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of
a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor
Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days o f fasting and thanksgiving on an
annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England
settlements as well.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or

more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the
first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United
States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy
conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification
of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also
designated days of thanks during their presidencies. In 1817 , New
York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual
Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the
American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition.

In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale—
author, among countless other things, of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little
Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to
governors, senators, presidents and other politicians, earning her the nickname
the “Mother of Thanksgiving.”
Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil
War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his
tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers
in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He
scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was
celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D.
Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during
the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was
met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a
bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS AND RITUALS

In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of

its original religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and
sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends. Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple
so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may
not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621.

Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted,

baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey
Federation. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry
sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity,
and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less
fortunate.

Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns
across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924,
New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous,
attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing an
enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers,
elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like
cartoon characters.

Beginning in the mid-20th century and perhaps even earlier, the president of
the United States has “pardoned” one or two Thanksgiving turkeys each year,
sparing the birds from slaughter and sending them to a farm for retirement. A
number of U.S. governors also perform the annual turkey pardoning ritual.

THANKSGIVING CONTROVERSIES

For some scholars, the jury is still out on whether the feast at Plymouth really
constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States. Indeed, historians have
recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North
America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration. In 1565, for instance, the
Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited member s of the local
Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to
thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. On December 4, 1619, when 38 British
settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s
James River, they read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of
thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Some Native Americans and many others take issue with how the Thanksgiving
story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In
their view, the traditional narrative paints a deceptively sunny portrait of
relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, masking the long
and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers
that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. Since 1970, protesters have
gathered on the day designated as Thanksgiving at the to p of Cole’s Hill, which
overlooks Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning.”
Similar events are held in other parts of the country.

THANKSGIVING’S ANCIENT ORIGINS

Although the American concept of Thanksgiving developed in the colonies of

New England, its roots can be traced back to the other side of the Atlantic. Both
the Separatists who came over on the Mayflower and the Puritans who arrived
soon after brought with them a tradition of providential holidays—days of
fasting during difficult or pivotal moments and days of feasting and celebration
to thank God in times of plenty.

As an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, moreover, Thanksgiving

falls under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents and millennia.
In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans feasted and paid tribute to
their gods after the fall harvest. Thanksgiving also bears a resemblance to the
ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. Finally, historians have noted that
Native Americans had a rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with
feasting and merrymaking long before Europeans set foot on their shores.
THE LIFE OF SANTA CLAUS

As Christmas approaches, the question “Have you remembered to be good” is

something Santa’s friends, young and old, often ask themselves. Fortunately, Santa’s
elves have some comforting insider information relating to this quandary. Without a
shadow of a doubt, Santa Claus is the nicest and most good-humored person on the
planet!

If you have done your best at trying to be good, you rest assured that your name will be
found on the elves’ List of the World’s Well Behaved Children.

Santa Claus’s roots lie far in the north. His place of birth is shrouded in the mystery of
many tales, but we do know that centuries ago he made his home in Lapland, in the
northernmost region of Finland. The Arctic Circle has always been a dear and delightful
place for Santa, as many of the fairytale secrets of Christmas have their roots in this
magical area.

There is reliable and precise information about when Santa was born; on Santa’s
reindeer driver’s license, his date of birth reads “A very long time ago”.

Santa Claus has always had a close relationship with nature. He spends a great deal of
time with his elves in the forests, on northern fells and the wilderness, sometimes
travelling on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, sometimes pulled on a sled by a team of
huskies, occasionally on skis or with a rowing boat. In summer, Santa likes to pick
berries and one his favorite pastimes in winter is to marvel the magnificent northern
lights.

Santa also believes that healthy nature is one of the best gifts we can pass on to future
generations.

Elves are very close helpers of Santa Claus, who help him with all the Christmas
preparations, remind children to be good and make sure Santa Claus takes regular
breaks to drink his hot chocolate. Santa’s reindeer don’t care that much for hot
chocolate, but taking part in the great Christmas journey is definitely the highlight of their
year. Mrs. Claus has been one of Santa’s closest helpers for already a few centuries
too.

In addition to these important helpers, Santa’s inner circle of friends also includes all
those who are passionate about stories and tales. Yes, he counts you as his friend too.

At Christmas time, Santa Claus travels around the world to distribute gifts. Year after
year, Children’s letters sent to Santa Claus are wish lists for an enormous number of
toys, games, dolls and toy cars, while grown-ups commonly ask for health, peace and
love for themselves, their family and friends.

Santa Claus himself thinks that one of the best things about Christmas is good spirit.
This is a gift always on top of the enormous pile of Christmas gifts

“Work” is a word that Santa Claus finds a little strange, and he often starts to smile when
he hears that word. He is a busy man, especially around Christmas, but he doesn’t think
he’s really working; so much he likes what he’s doing.

Santa Claus has a number of hobbies, and we know he is interested in at least

archaeology, astronomy and building snowmen. Sitting by the campfire and watching the
amazing Northern Lights is something Santa loves doing, just as skateboarding and
fishing. Santa Claus is also a great fan of taking naps, and above all, he simply loves
reading all the letters he is sent.

Santa Claus’s home is located far in the north, but he also lives in the wondrous world of
stories and tales. In this world of stories and tales, many matters are playfully true and
truthfully play, and people of all ages are always welcome to join. In Santa’s own words:

“Once upon a time, there was a world where children laughed a lot and were very
happy…”