religion, cult, tradition - business models

christianity
- Rovaniemi (Finnish: [ˈroʋɑniemi] (listen)) is a city and municipality of Finland. It is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland. Rovaniemi is a unilingual Finnish-speaking municipality and uncommonly for larger Finnish towns, it is also known by its Finnish name and spelling in the Swedish language.The rova part in the name Rovaniemi has often been considered to be of Saamic origin, as roavve in Saami denotes a forested ridge or hill or the site of an old forest fire. In Southern Saami dialects, however, rova means a heap of stones, a rock or a group of rocks in a stretch of rapids or even a sauna stove.^{[citation needed]} The niemipart of the name means "cape". Names in the Samic languages include Inari Sami: Ruávinjargâ, Northern Sami: Roavenjárga and Roavvenjárga and Skolt Sami: Ruäˊvnjargg.

• The exploitation of Lapland's natural resources in the 1800s boosted Rovaniemi's growth. Extensive logging sites and gold fever attracted thousands of people to Lapland. As the mining of natural resources was increased, Rovaniemi became the business centre of the province of Lapland.
• https://www.ft.com/content/05412280-fa1e-11e8-a154-2b65ddf314e9 Last year, close to 580,000 visitors flew into Rovaniemi (pop. 62,667), almost double the number in 2010. Much of that growth has been driven by Asian visitors, especially from China. More than a million annual visitors are expected in Rovaniemi by 2022, and this December is expected to break all records, helped by increasing numbers of flights, including a new easyJet route direct from London to Rovaniemi. I pop into Santa’s post office, where many of the tables are taken up with young Asian visitors writing postcards home that will be stamped with a special Arctic Circle postmark. Rovaniemi also receives a flood of letters from around the world (apparently any addressed to “Santa Claus, Lapland” will arrive here, though most people find the full address via Google). A board shows where most of this year’s 500,000-plus letters have come from: China is in first place, then Poland, followed by Italy, the UK and Japan. “The UK was top until last Christmas,” explains post elf Elina, a middle-aged woman in regulation elfish get-up. “Now, China is way ahead: we’ve had a hundred thousand letters just from China this year. And Poland is always up there — there’s a real tradition in Poland of writing letters to Santa Claus.” Even though St Nicholas, the third-century saint that inspired Santa Claus, lived in Turkey, an illustration in Harper’s Weekly magazine in 1866 is credited with establishing Santa’s home as the North Pole. In 1927, Finnish radio personality Markus Rautio (aka “Uncle Marcus”) declared on air that Santa’s workshop had been discovered in Lapland’s Korvatunturi, or “Ear Mountain”, a remote peak on the Russian border. In Finland, at least, the story quickly caught on, and Finnish mothers still warn children that Santa and his elves can listen in on their words and dreams at Ear Mountain. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Finland’s tourist officials started to seriously market Lapland as Santa’s official home, with his office in Rovaniemi. In 1981, a Santa letter-writing competition in the UK led to six children winning trips to Rovaniemi, and on Christmas Day 1984, 20,000 locals turned up at the airport to watch the arrival of a Concorde flight from London, the first of what would become regular winter charters. The Brits led a Santa tourism spike that continued through the 1990s, followed by the Christmas-loving Spanish and, curiously, Israelis, after an Israeli called Shimon Biton moved here with his local wife and set up a charter travel company in 1995. Santa has been welcoming visitors to the Santa Claus office in three-minute slots every day since 1992, while operators have added ever more reindeer sleigh rides, husky tours, snowmobile trips and the like.

- great awakening

• The First Great Awakening (sometimes Great Awakening) or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its Thirteen Colonies between the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. The Great Awakening marked the emergence of Anglo-American evangelicalism as a transdenominational movement within the Protestant churches. In the United States, the term Great Awakening is most often used, while in the United Kingdom, it is referred to as the Evangelical Revival. Building on the foundations of older traditions—Puritanism, pietism and Presbyterianism—major leaders of the revival such as George Whitefield, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards articulated a theology on revival and salvation that transcended denominational boundaries and helped create a common evangelical identity. Revivalists added to the doctrinal imperatives of Reformation Protestantism an emphasis on providential outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Extemporaneous preaching gave listeners a sense of deep personal conviction of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ and fostered introspection and commitment to a new standard of personal morality. Revival theology stressed that religious conversion was not only intellectual assent to correct Christian doctrine but had to be a "new birth" experienced in the heart. Revivalists also taught that receiving assurance of salvationwas a normal expectation in the Christian life.
• The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1850s. The Second Great Awakening reflected Romanticism characterized by enthusiasm, emotion, and an appeal to the supernatural. It rejected the skeptical rationalism and deism of the Enlightenment.

• Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism.^[1] Finney was best known as an innovative revivalist during the period 1825–1835 in upstate New York and Manhattan, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, and a religious writer. Together with several other evangelical leaders, his religious views led him to promote social reforms, such as abolition of slavery and equal education for women and African Americans. From 1835 he taught at Oberlin College of Ohio, which accepted students without regard to race or sex. He served as its second president from 1851 to 1866, during which its faculty and students were activists for abolition, the Underground Railroad, and universal education.Finney was active as a revivalist from 1825 to 1835, in Jefferson County and for a few years in Manhattan. In 1830-31, he led a revival in Rochester, New York that has been noted as inspiring other revivals of the Second Great Awakening.

• The Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism.^[2] It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene movements, and Christian Science. The era saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition. However, some scholars, such as Kenneth Scott Latourette, dispute the thesis that the United States ever had a Third Great Awakening.
• The Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian awakening that some scholars — most notably economic historian Robert Fogel — say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial, with many historians believing the religious changes that took place in the US during these years were not equivalent to those of the first three great awakenings. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted. Whether or not they constitute an awakening, many changes did take place. The "mainline" Protestant churches weakened sharply in both membership and influence while the most conservative religious denominations (such as the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans) grew rapidly in numbers, spread across the United States, had grave internal theological battles and schisms, and became politically powerful. Other evangelical and fundamentalist denominations also expanded rapidly. At the same time, secularism grew dramatically, and the more conservative churches saw themselves battling secularism in terms of issues such as gay rights, abortion, and creationism.

- An Advent calendar is a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Since the date of the First Sunday of Advent varies, falling between November 27 and December 3 inclusive, many Advent calendars, especially those that are reusable, often begin on December 1, although those that are produced for a specific year often include the last few days of November that are part of the liturgical season. The Advent calendar was first used by German Lutherans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Traditional Advent calendars feature the manger scene, Saint Nicholas and winter weather, while others range in theme, from sports to technology.^[6] They come in a multitude of forms, from a simple paper calendar with flaps covering each of the days to fabric pockets on a background scene to painted wooden boxes with cubby holes for small items. Many Advent calendars take the form of a large rectangular card with "windows",^[5] one for each day of December leading up to and including Christmas Eve (December 24). Consecutive doors are opened every day leading up to Christmas, beginning on the start of the Advent season for that year,^[2][3] or in the case of reusable Advent calendars, December 1. Often the doors are distributed across the calendar in no particular order. The calendar windows open to reveal an image, a poem, a portion of a story (such as the story of the Nativity of Jesus), or a small gift, such as a toy or a chocolate item. Often, each window has a Bible verse and Christian prayer printed on it, which Christians incorporate as part of their daily Advent devotions.^[4][7] Advent calendars may also have puzzles and games printed on their reverse side.In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden there is also a tradition of having a so-called Julekalender (Swedish: Julkalender, Finnish: Joulukalenteri, Icelandic: Jóladagatal; the local word for a Yule—or Christmas—calendar, even though it actually is an Advent calendar) in the form of a television or radio show, starting on December 1 and ending on Christmas Eve (December 24). Such a show first aired on radio in 1957 in the form of the Swedish radio series Barnens adventskalender; the first televised show of the genre aired in 1960 in the form of the Swedish program Titteliture.^[10] The first julekalender aired in Denmark was Historier fra hele verden in 1962. The televised julkalender or julekalendar has now extended into the other Nordic countries; in Finland, for example, the show is called Joulukalenteri. Over the years, there have been several kinds of julekalender; some are directed at children, some at both children and adults, and some directed at adults alone. There is a Julkalenderradio show in Sweden, which airs in the days leading up to Christmas. A classic example of a julekalender enjoyed by children (as well as adults, if purely for nostalgic reasons) is the 1979 Norwegian television show Jul i Skomakergata; another is the 1990 Icelandic television show Á baðkari til Betlehem. En 1908, Gerhard Lang, éditeur de livres médicaux à Munich, est le premier à commercialiser un calendrier composé de petits dessins colorés reliés à un support en carton2. En 1920 est commercialisé le premier calendrier de l'Avent avec des petites portes ou fenêtres à ouvrir. Dès 1958, apparaissent les premières surprises en chocolat placées derrière ces petites fenêtres : chacune d'entre elles doivent être mangées jour après jour3.
- jingle bell https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-called-a-one-horse-open-sleigh-when-Santa-Claus-sleigh-is-clearly-pulled-by-reindeers-not-by-horses
- people/organisations connected with methodist/alliance church

• [heroes 2 - 48 people who made a difference in our world] david livingstone, guidelines international, mary slessor, sir ernest shackleton, rosario riveria (lima), luis palau (lima)

• Eric Henry Liddell (/ˈlɪdəl/; 16 January 1902 – 21 February 1945) was a Scottish Olympic Gold Medalist runner, rugby union international player, and Christian missionary. Liddell was born in China to Scottish missionary parents. He attended boarding school near London, spending time when possible with his family in Edinburgh, and afterwards attended the University of Edinburgh. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Liddell refused to run in the heats for his favoured 100 metres because they were held on a Sunday. Instead he competed in the 400 metres held on a weekday, a race that he won. He returned to China in 1925 to serve as a missionary teacher. Aside from two furloughs in Scotland, he remained in China until his death in a Japanese civilian internment camp in 1945.Eric Liddell, often called the "Flying Scotsman" after the record breaking locomotive, was born 16 January 1902, in Tientsin, China, the second son of the Reverend and Mrs. James Dunlop Liddell, Scottish missionaries with the London Missionary Society. Liddell went to school in China until the age of five. At the age of six, he and his eight-year-old brother Robert were enrolled in Eltham College, a boarding school in south London for the sons of missionaries. Their parents and sister Jenny returned to China. During the boys' time at Eltham, their parents, sister, and new brother Ernest came home on furlough two or three times and were able to be together as a family, mainly living in Edinburgh.

• dwight l moody (1837-1899), evangelist

• armin gesswein (1908-2001)

• peter cao - set up orphanage in vietnam for american- asian children
• constantine von tischendorf  (1815-1874)
• paul kauffman 1920-1997 founder of 亞洲歸主協會; set up the first 中國研究中心in hk in 1960s 
• francis schaeffer 

•  go puan seng 吴半生 publisher of fukien times, based on manila
• ira sankey 1840-1908 
• a w tozer 1897-1963 

•  arnold toynbee 1889-1975

muslim
- 暢銷全球的朱古力品牌「瑞士三角朱古力」，今年4月已獲認證為清真食品，可供穆斯林食用，試圖進軍穆斯林市場。消息引起歐洲部分國家的極右人士抗議，指三角朱古力生產商的母公司、美國糖果商Mondelez漠視非穆斯林人士，呼籲消費者杯葛。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2018/12/20/a20-1220.pdf
- 日本拉麵多數跟豬肉脫不了關係，但由於許多來自東南亞信奉伊斯蘭教的遊客，也希望能試試日本拉麵，因此一蘭便想到開一間完全不用豬肉的分店。新店位於東京新宿，預計在明年2月開張http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2018/12/21/a23-1221.pdf