Cultural Impact
It is a public holiday in Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Chile, Colombia, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guam, Italy, Liechtenstein, Macau, Malta, Monaco, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, San Marino, Seychelles, Spain, Vatican City, Venezuela, and in the Catholic Cantons of Switzerland. In some countries, though December 8 is not a public holiday, their respective Episcopal Conference however declared this day as a Holy Day of Obligation, as it is in the United States, the Philippines and Ireland.
December 8 is also celebrated as Mother's Day in Panama in honor of this holiday and is therefore a national holiday.
The University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio, celebrates Christmas on Campus every December 8 in conjunction with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
In Leon, Nicaragua, the feast is celebrated with a tradition called Griteria composed of grand parades, fireworks, songs and various religious activities related to the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her maternal role in Roman Catholicism. Similar practices are observed in various other Catholic countries.
Read more about this topic: Feast Of The Immaculate Conception
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or impact:
“If we can learn ... to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture ... we may well begin to understand that although the ideological power of contemporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete.”
—Janice A. Radway (b. 1949)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)