{"id":440,"date":"2015-12-03T14:53:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/?p=440"},"modified":"2015-12-03T14:53:09","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:53:09","slug":"holiday-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/holiday-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tStarting in the mid-1930s, female students living on campus participated in an annual candlelight ceremony featuring yule logs and a Christmas tree. The event began with a parade of students holding candles walking down the steps in Mary Graydon Hall. Starting in 1959, the women marched into the Clendenen gymnasium singing Christmas carols while holding candles.<\/p>\n<p>Each December, the Women\u2019s House Council held a secret ballot for &#8220;Best Loved Girl&#8221; and &#8220;Most Representative Girl&#8221; from each class. The winners were announced at the candlelight ceremony. Controversy over mandatory attendance and other issues led to moving the awards ceremony to the spring. The last &#8220;Best Loved Girl&#8221; was elected in 1966.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_441\" style=\"width: 229px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/12\/Christmas-at-MGC-1958.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-441\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-441\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/12\/Christmas-at-MGC-1958-219x300.jpg\" alt=\"Female students heading to the 1958 Best Loved Girl Ceremony\" width=\"219\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-441\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Female students heading to the 1958 Best Loved Girl Ceremony<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting in the mid-1930s, female students living on campus participated in an annual candlelight ceremony featuring yule logs and a Christmas tree. The event began with a parade of students holding candles walking down the steps in Mary Graydon Hall. Starting in 1959, the women marched into the Clendenen gymnasium singing Christmas carols while holding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-university-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}