<> Tomorrow's food holidays(s):
* 'National Pfeffernusse Day'.
- From Wikipedia (Pfeffernüsse):
'Pfeffernüsse are tiny spice cookies, popular as a holiday treat in
Germany, Denmark, and The Netherlands, as well as among ethnic Mennonites
in North America. They are called pepernoten in Dutch (plural), päpanät in
Plautdietsch, pfeffernuesse or peppernuts in English, and pebernødder in
Danish.
While the exact origin of the cookie is uncertain, the traditional Dutch
belief links the pepernoten to the feast of Sinterklaas, celebrated on
December 5 in The Netherlands and December 6 in Germany and Belgium. This
is when children receive gifts from St. Nicholas, who is partially the
inspiration for the Santa Claus tradition. In Germany, the pfeffernüsse is
more closely associated with Christmas. The cookie has been part of
European yuletide celebrations since the 1850s.
The name peppernut (Pfeffernüsse, peppernoder etc.) does not mean it
contains nuts, though occasional varieties do. The cookies are roughly the
size of nuts and can be eaten by the handful, which may account for the
name.
Throughout the years, the popularity of the pfeffernüsse has caused many
bakers to create their own recipes. Though recipes differ, all contain
aromatic spices - most commonly cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cardamom,
and anise. Some variations are dusted with powdered sugar, though that is
not a traditional ingredient. Molasses and honey are also used to sweeten
the cookies.
For the dough, most versions still use 19th century ingredients such as
potassium carbonate and ammonium carbonate as leavening agents to get the
sticky and dense consistency of the original mixture. It is then either
kneaded by hand or through the use of an electric mixer'.
[The Hankster says] Great, cookies you can carry around in your pockets. What? Christmas is sometimes fatiguing and you might need a little boost of energy. Not sure how I will carry a talk glass of cold milk. These cookies sound like enamle busters without it.
<> Other holidays / celebrations
* 'Festivus'.
- From Wikipedia (Festivus):
'Festivus is both a parody and a secular holiday celebrated on December 23
that serves as an alternative to participating in the pressures and
commercialism of the Christmas season. It has been described as the perfect
secular theme for an all-inclusive December gathering
Originally a family tradition of scriptwriter Dan O'Keefe, who worked on
the American sitcom Seinfeld, Festivus entered popular culture after it was
made the focus of the 1997 episode The Strike The non-commercial holiday's
celebration, as it was shown on Seinfeld, occurs on December 23 and
includes a Festivus dinner, an unadorned aluminum Festivus pole, practices
such as the Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength, and the labeling of
easily explainable events as Festivus miracles
The episode refers to it as a Festivus for the rest of us, referencing its
non-commercial aspect. It has also been described both as a parody holiday
festival and as a form of playful consumer resistance'.
[The Hankster says] Not too soon to look for the old bare aluminum pole and practice up on some of those wrestling moves.
* 'National Roots Day'.
When family is around for the holidays, it is a good time to discover and
document your roots.
[The Hankster says] Good idea, great time to do it.
<> Awareness / Observances:
o Other:
* 'Human Light Celebration'.
- From Wikipedia (HumanLight):
'HumanLight is a Humanist holiday celebrated on December 23. Like Kwanzaa,
HumanLight is a modern invention, created to provide a specifically
Humanist celebration the northern Hemisphere's winter solstice and within
the western world's holiday season. It was established by the New Jersey
Humanist Network in 2001.
Humanists have cast HumanLight as a celebration of a Humanist's vision of a
good future. They celebrate a positive approach to the coming new year,
generally through the lens of Humanist (and particularly secular humanist)
philosophy—secular as opposed to religious. The December 23 date allows
HumanLight to connect itself to the December holiday season without
interfering with other winter holidays which many Humanists may also
celebrate.
HumanLight began with a single event in Verona, New Jersey in 2001. In
2006, there were twenty American events listed on the holiday's homepage,
and the American Humanist Association became HumanLight's first national
sponsor. In 2007, the first HumanLight celebration outside of the U.S. took
place in Chester, England'.
<> Historical events on December 23
* 'In 1823, The story 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', aka 'The Night Before
Christmas', is published anonymously.
- From Wikipedia: 'A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly known as, The
Night Before Christmas, and Twas the Night Before Christmas, from its first
line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823, and later attributed
to Clement Clarke Moore, who acknowledged authorship in 1837'. 'The poem,
which has been called 'arguably the best-known verses ever written by an
American', is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa
Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today, and has had a massive
impact on the history of Christmas gift giving. Prior to the poem, American
ideas about St. Nicholas and other Christmastide visitors varied
considerably'. .
* 'In 1912, The first 'Keystone Kops' silent film, 'Hoffmeyer's Legacy'
premiers.
- From Wikipedia: 'The Keystone Cops (often spelled, Keystone Kops) were
fictional incompetent policemen, featured in silent film comedies in the
early 20th century. The movies were produced by Mack Sennett for his
Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917'. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Hoffmeyer's Legacy is a 1912 comedy short directed by
Mack Sennett and notable for being the first Keystone Cops comedy. However,
many consider the first real Keystone Cop comedy to be The Bangville Police
(1913'.
* 'In 1947, The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. .
- From Wikipedia: 'The thermionic triode, a vacuum tube invented in 1907,
enabled amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony. The triode,
however, was a fragile device that consumed a lot of power. Physicist
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a field-effect transistor (FET)
in Canada in 1925, which was intended to be a solid-state replacement for
the triode. Lilienfeld also filed identical patents in the United States in
1926 and 1928. However, Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles
about his devices nor did his patents cite any specific examples of a
working prototype. Because the production of high-quality semiconductor
materials was still decades away, Lilienfeld's solid-state amplifier ideas
would not have found practical use in the 1920s and 1930s, even if such a
device had been built. In 1934, German inventor Oskar Heil patented a
similar device in Europe.
From November 17, 1947 to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain at AT and T's Bell Labs in the United States performed experiments
and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of
germanium, a signal was produced with the output power greater than the
input. Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw the potential
in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the
knowledge of semiconductors. The term transistor was coined by John R.
Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance. According to Lillian
Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, authors of a biography of John Bardeen, Shockley
had proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor should be based
on the field-effect and that he be named as the inventor. Having unearthed
Lilienfeld’s patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at
Bell Labs advised against Shockley's proposal because the idea of a
field-effect transistor that used an electric field as a grid was not new.
Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the
first point-contact transistor. In acknowledgement of this accomplishment,
Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize
in Physics for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of
the transistor effect'.
* 'In 1954, The first human kidney transplant is performed.
- From Wikipedia: Kidney transplantation or renal transplantation is the
organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage renal disease.
Kidney transplantation is typically classified as deceased-donor (formerly
known as cadaveric) or living-donor transplantation depending on the source
of the donor organ. Living-donor renal transplants are further
characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related
(living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological
relationship exists between the donor and recipient. Exchanges and chains
are a novel approach to expand the living donor pool. In February 2012,
this novel approach to expand the living donor pool was featured on the
front page of the New York Times in a story covering the largest chain in
the world involving 60 participants organized by the National Kidney
Registry. In 2014 the record for the largest chain was broken again by a
swap involving 70 participants, covered by ABC News.
'The first kidney transplants between living patients were undertaken in
1952 at the Necker hospital in Paris by Jean Hamburger although the kidney
failed after 3 weeks of good function and later in 1954 in Boston. The
Boston transplantation, performed on December 23, 1954, at Brigham Hospital
was performed by Joseph Murray, J. Hartwell Harrison, John P. Merrill and
others. The procedure was done between identical twins Ronald and Richard
Herrick to eliminate any problems of an immune reaction. For this and later
work, Dr. Murray received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990. The
recipient, Richard Herrick, died eight years after the transplantation'.
* 'In 1986, Voyager is the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the
world.
- From Wikipedia: 'The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base's 15,000
foot (4,600 m) long runway in the Mojave Desert on December 14, 1986, and
ended 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds later on December 23, setting a
flight endurance record. '. .
No. 1 song
Top movie
Monthly holiday / awareness days in December
Food
Buckwheat Month
Worldwide Food Service Safety Month
Health
Aids Awareness Month
National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month
National Impaired Driving Prevention Month
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
Animal and Pet
Operation Santa Paws
Other
National Tie Month
National Write A Business Plan Month
Universal Human Rights Month
Youngsters on The Air Month
December is:
December origin (from Wikipedia): '
December gets its name from the Latin word decem (meaning ten) because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the Roman calendar, which began in March. The winter days following December were not included as part of any month. Later, the months of January and February were created out of the monthless period and added to the beginning of the calendar, but December retained its name.
'
'
December is the first month of meteorological winter in the Northern
Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, December is the seasonal equivalent
to June in the Northern hemisphere, which is the first month of summer. D
ecember is the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year in the
Northern Hemisphere and the longest daylight hours of the year in the
Southern Hemisphere.
'
December at Wikipedia: More
If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago,
or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More
Best selling books of 1966 More
Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More