Celebrate All the Way to the Bank

Weddings, parades, fairs, graduations, conferences, political rallies, fashion shows—what do they have in common? Everyone would rather have someone else plan and conduct them! That someone else can be you if you’re a professional event planner who knows how to develop a theme, find a location, arrange entertainment, plan transportation and do the myriad things needed to pull an event off successfully.

Learn everything you need to know to get started in one of today’s hottest—and most lucrative—businesses:

• How to stay abreast of the newest entertainment, food and decoration options
• Hot new industry trends, from environmentally friendly parties to extravagant first birthday parties and more
• How to build a loyal customer base for large and small events
• Targeted strategies for planning commercial events, political events, civic events, social events and more
• The latest information on the use of technology in event planning

With gross profits averaging 30 to 40 percent, you can easily earn six figures a year planning and conducting events—and have a blast in the process. If you’re looking for a flexible schedule, a wide variety of responsibilities and new adventures every week, event planning is the business for you.

Why is Cinco de Mayo--a holiday commemorating a Mexican victory over the French at Puebla in 1862--so widely celebrated in California and across the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico? As David E. Hayes-Bautista explains, the holiday is not Mexican at all, but rather an American one, created by Latinos in California during the mid-nineteenth century. Hayes-Bautista shows how the meaning of Cinco de Mayo has shifted over time--it embodied immigrant nostalgia in the 1930s, U.S. patriotism during World War II, Chicano Power in the 1960s and 1970s, and commercial intentions in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, it continues to reflect the aspirations of a community that is engaged, empowered, and expanding.

Full of seasonal stories, activities, crafts, poems and recipes, this book offers a guide to celebrating festivals throughout the seasons. A sequel to The Children's Year, the book arises from the festivals workshops run by the authors at the annual Lifeways Conference at Emerson College. This book encourages both adults and children to explore forgotten corners of the educational curriculum and develop and adapt the various festivals to fit their own family traditions.

Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875-1955—truly haunting Americana, with a foreword by David Lynch The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging soul cakes in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

Lesley Bannatyne's fascinating book . . . will be widely appealing to anyone who ever wondered where witches, trick-or-treating, and jack-o-lanterns really came from. It is by far the best book on the history of Halloween available today. Alison Guss, senior producer, The Haunted History of Halloween, The History Channel An excellent resource for research into the history of holidays . . . in the United States . . . Highly Recommended. The Book Report Halloween has evolved from the Druids' celebrations of 2,000 years ago to become today the fastest-growing holiday in the country. This, the only book to completely cover All Hallow's Eve, examines those ancient origins as well as its traditions and celebrations, from costuming to bobbing for apples. Jack-o-lanterns, black cats, and witches are explained. Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins lurk behind every page. The book traces the contributions of America's immigrants to the holiday, documenting the beliefs each ethnic group has added to the mix. Related recipes, poems, songs, crafts, and photos perfectly complement the meticulously documented text. The result is the most educational and entertaining examination of Halloween, its myths, and its truths.

The Day of the Dead Celebration is the most important holiday of the year in Mexico and parts of the American Southwest, a joyful time when families remember their dead. Day of the Dead provides a colorful look at the iconic folk art and family traditions that play a vital role in the event, which happens across the country from October 31 through November 2.

Kitty Williams and Stevie Mack have led Day of the Dead art and cultural tours in Mexico for many years. Through their company CRIZMAC Art & Cultural Education Materials, Inc., they produce award-winning curriculum resources for schools and institutions, including video programs such as Flickering Lights: Days of the Dead. They live in Tucson, Arizona.

The art and tradition behind this unique and joyous Mexican celebration

From the foremost authority, the definitive guide to your career as an event leader!

Today's special events have their roots in the universal, ancient human need to celebrate with ceremony and ritual. Twenty-first-century event leaders acknowledge these roots while moving the event management profession toward the new possibilities presented by our globalizing world. Special Events: The Roots and Wings of Celebration, Fifth Edition provides experienced as well as aspiring event leaders with a comprehensive guide to understanding, planning, funding, promoting, and producing special events. Filled with helpful resources and illustrative examples, this Fifth Edition covers such areas as marketing, sponsorship, human resource management, financial administration, risk management, safety and security, global event leadership models, media use, legal and ethical considerations, technology, career development, and more.

New and revised materials in this edition include:

• New profiles of leaders in the global events industry from Africa to America and from Bulgaria to Birmingham-learn what makes the greats great and their events truly spectacular
• Five Best Practice examples of exemplary events and over a dozen detailed case studies of all types of events
• Broader coverage of production schedules and the soon-to-be new industry standard, the APEX event specification guide
• Revised discussion of law and ethics in special events
• Over 100 new Web resources throughout text
• Descriptions of the leading meetings and events industry professional certification programs and how to earn these designations

Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead.--Terry Eagleton, The Nation Widely praised as impressive (The Washington Post Book World), ambitious (The Wall Street Journal), and alluring (The Los Angeles Times), Dancing in the Streets explores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.

Drawing on a wealth of history and anthropology, Barbara Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. From the earliest orgiastic Mesopotamian rites to the medieval practice of Christianity as a danced religion and the transgressive freedoms of carnival, she demonstrates that mass festivities have long been central to the Western tradition. In recent centuries, this festive tradition has been repressed, cruelly and often bloodily. But as Ehrenreich argues in this original, exhilarating, and ultimately optimistic book, the celebratory impulse is too deeply ingrained in human nature ever to be completely extinguished.

Hail Spring with a Bright Fire Celebration!

Discover the roots of Beltane or bright fire, the ancient Pagan festival that celebrates spring, and the return of nature's season of growth and renewal. In the only book written solely on this ancient Pagan festival, you'll explore the evolution of the May Pole and various folklore characters connected to May Day celebrations. Raven Grimassi reveals the history behind the revelry, and shows you how to welcome this sacred season of fertility, growth, and gain with:

·May Day magick and divination: Beltane spells to attract money, success, love, and serenity; scrying with a bowl or glass
·Beltane goodies: Quick May Wine, Bacchus Pudding, May Serpent Cake, May Wreath Cake
·Seasonal crafts: Maypole centerpiece, May wreath and garland, pentacle hair braids, May Day basket
·Springtime rituals and traditions: the Maypole dance, May doll, the Mummer's Play, Beltane fires, May King and Queen
·Myths, fairy and flower lore: Green Man, Jack-in-the-Green, Dusio, Hobby Horse; elves, trolls and fairies; spring flowers and their correspondences

This well-researched book corrects many of the common misconceptions associated with May Day, and will help you appreciate the spirituality and connection to Nature that are intimate elements of May Day Celebrations. Welcome the season of fertility, flowers, and fairies with Beltane: Springtime Rituals, Lore & Celebration.