<> Tomorrow's food holidays(s):
* 'National Pumpkin Pie Day'.
- From Wikipedia (Pumpkin pie):
'Pumpkin pie is a sweet dessert pie with a spiced, pumpkin-based custard
filling. The pumpkin is a symbol of harvest time, and pumpkin pie is often
eaten during the fall and early winter. In the United States and Canada, it
is usually prepared for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and is also featured at
Halloween.
The pie consists of a pumpkin-based custard, ranging in colour from orange
to brown, baked in a single pie shell, rarely with a top crust. The pie is
generally flavored with cinnamon, powdered ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.
Allspice is also commonly used and can replace the clove and nutmeg, as its
flavor is similar to both combined. Cardamom and vanilla are also sometimes
used as batter spices. The spice mixture is called pumpkin pie spice.
The pie is often made from canned pumpkin or packaged pumpkin pie filling
(spices included), mainly from varieties of Cucurbita moschata.
The pumpkin is native to the continent of North America. The pumpkin was an
early export to France from there it was introduced to Tudor England, and
the flesh of the pompion was quickly accepted as pie filler. During the
seventeenth century, pumpkin pie recipes could be found in English
cookbooks, such as Hannah Woolley's The Gentlewoman's Companion (1675).
Pumpkin pies made by early American colonists were more likely to be a
savory soup made and served in a pumpkin than a sweet custard in a crust.
It was not until the early nineteenth century that the recipes appeared in
American cookbooks or pumpkin pie became a common addition to the
Thanksgiving dinner. The Pilgrims brought the pumpkin pie back to New
England, while the English method of cooking the pumpkin took a different
course. In the 19th century, the English pumpkin pie was prepared by
stuffing the pumpkin with apples, spices, and sugar and then baking it
whole.
Today, throughout much of the United States, it is traditional to serve
pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving dinner. Additionally, many modern companies
produce seasonal pumpkin pie-flavored products such as candy, cheesecake,
coffee, ice cream, french toast, waffles and pancakes, and many breweries
produce a seasonal pumpkin ale or beer these are generally not flavored
with pumpkins, but rather pumpkin pie spices. Commercially made pumpkin pie
mix is made from Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata
(Libbey Select uses the Select Dickinson Pumpkin variety of C. moschata for
its canned pumpkins)'.
[The Hankster says] A must have is a tall mound of whipped cream on top, and of course a tall glass of cold milk.
* 'Christmas Pudding Day'. From Wikipedia: 'Christmas pudding is a type of
pudding traditionally served as part of the Christmas dinner in Britain,
Ireland and in some other countries where it has been brought by British
emigrants. It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known
as plum pudding or just 'pud', though this can also refer to other kinds of
boiled pudding involving dried fruit. Despite the name 'plum pudding,' the
pudding contains no actual plums due to the pre-Victorian use of the word
'plums' as a term for raisins. The pudding is composed of many dried fruits
held together by egg and suet, sometimes moistened by treacle or molasses
and flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and other spices. The
pudding is aged for a month, months, or even a year the high alcohol
content of the pudding prevents it from spoiling during this time'. My
note: Def: suet: the hard white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle,
sheep, and other animals, used to make foods including puddings, pastry,
and mincemeat. Def: treacle: 'British term for molasses'.
[The Hankster says] Let's see. A dessert that when eaten at Easter is called a "Plum Pudding' and at Christmas, a 'Christmas Pudding' and in both cases raisins instead of plums. I must look into this. I can foresee the need of multiple samples and a tall glass of cold milk.
<> Other holidays / celebrations
* 'A’Phabet Day or No “L” Day'.
A parody day. Try writing today and using No 'L's in your words.
[The Hankster says] I can't he?p, but use them. It's not as easy as dropping H's.
<> Awareness / Observances:
o Other:
* 'Christmas'.
- From Wikipedia (Christmas):
'Christmas or Christmas Day (Old English: Cristesmæsse, meaning Christ's
Mass) is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ,
observed most commonly on December 25 as a religious and cultural
celebration among billions of people around the world.
Although the month and date of Jesus' birth are unknown, by the
early-to-mid 4th century the Western Christian Church had placed Christmas
on December 25, a date which was later adopted in the East. Today, most
Christians celebrate on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar, which has
been adopted almost universally in the civil calendars used in countries
throughout the world. However, some Eastern Christian Churches celebrate
Christmas on the December 25 of the older Julian calendar, which currently
corresponds to January 7 in the Gregorian calendar, the day after the
Western Christian Church celebrates the Epiphany. This is not a
disagreement over the date of Christmas as such, but rather a preference of
which calendar should be used to determine the day that is December 25. In
the Council of Tours of 567, the Church, with its desire to be universal,
declared the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany to be one unified
festal cycle, thus giving significance to both the Western and Eastern
dates of Christmas. Moreover, for Christians, the belief that God came into
the world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity, rather than
the exact birth date, is considered to be the primary purpose in
celebrating Christmas.
Although it is not known why December 25 became a date of celebration,
there are several factors that may have influenced the choice. December 25
was the date the Romans marked as the winter solstice, and Jesus was
identified with the Sun based on an Old Testament verse. The date is
exactly nine months following Annunciation, when the conception of Jesus is
celebrated. Finally, the Romans had a series of pagan festivals near the
end of the year, so Christmas may have been scheduled at this time to
appropriate, or compete with, one or more of these festivals.
The celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have
a mix of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular themes and origins. Popular
modern customs of the holiday include gift giving, completing an Advent
calendar or Advent wreath, Christmas music and caroling, lighting a
Christingle, an exchange of Christmas cards, church services, a special
meal, and the display of various Christmas decorations, including Christmas
trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and
holly. In addition, several closely related and often interchangeable
figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and
Christkind, are associated with bringing gifts to children during the
Christmas season and have their own body of traditions and lore. Because
gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve
heightened economic activity, the holiday has become a significant event
and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. The economic impact of
Christmas has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of
the world'.
* 'Hanukkah'.
- From Wikipedia (Hanukkah):
'Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy
Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt
against the Seleucid Empire. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and
days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar,
which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the
Gregorian calendar. It is also known as the Festival of Lights and the
Feast of Dedication.
The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a unique
candelabrum, the nine-branched menorah (also called a Chanukiah/Hanukiah),
one additional light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on
the final night. The typical menorah consists of eight branches with an
additional visually distinct branch. The extra light, with which the others
are lit, is called a shamash (attendant) and is given a distinct location,
dreidel and eating oil-based foods such as doughnuts and latkes. Since the
1970s, the worldwide Chabad Hasidic movement has initiated public menorah
lightings in open public places in many countries'.
<> Historical events on December 25
* 'In 1937, Arturo Toscanini conducts first live concert broadcast for NBC
radio. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Arturo Toscanini (Italian: March 25, 1867 – January 16,
1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians
of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his
perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his
photographic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala
Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of
the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a
household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and
television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic
repertoire.
Toscanini returned to the United States where the NBC Symphony Orchestra
was created for him in 1937. He conducted his first NBC broadcast concert
on December 25, 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in New York City's Rockefeller
Center. The acoustics of the specially built studio were very dry some
remodeling in 1942 for Leopold Stokowski added a bit more reverberation.
(In 1950, 8-H was converted into a television studio. It has been home to
NBC's Saturday Night Live since 1975. In 1980, Zubin Mehta and the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra began a series of special televised NBC concerts
called Live From Studio 8H, the first one being a tribute to Toscanini,
punctuated by clips from his television concerts.)
The NBC broadcasts were initially preserved on large 16-inch transcription
discs recorded at 33-1/3 rpm, until NBC began using magnetic tape in 1949.
NBC employed special RCA high fidelity microphones for the broadcasts, and
they can be seen in some photographs of Toscanini and the orchestra. Some
of Toscanini's recording sessions for RCA Victor were mastered on sound
film in a process developed about 1930, as detailed by RCA producer Charles
O'Connell in his memoirs, On and Off The Record. In addition, hundreds of
hours of Toscanini's rehearsals with the NBC were preserved and are now
housed in the Toscanini Legacy archive at The New York Public Library'.
* 'In 1939, Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph as the 9th reindeer.
- From Wikipedia: ' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer,
created by Robert Lewis May, usually depicted as a young calf who barely
has antlers, with a glowing red nose, popularly known as Santa's ninth
reindeer When depicted, he is the lead reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh on
Christmas Eve. The luminosity of his nose is so great that it illuminates
the team's path through inclement winter weather.
Rudolph first appeared in a 1939 booklet written by Robert L. May and
published by Montgomery Ward, the department store.
The story is owned by The Rudolph Company, LP and has been adapted in
numerous forms including a popular song, the iconic television special and
sequels, and a feature film and sequel. Character Arts, LLC manages the
licensing for the Rudolph Company, LP. In many countries, Rudolph has
become a figure of Christmas folklore. 2014 marked the 75th anniversary of
the character and the 50th anniversary of the television special. A series
of postage stamps featuring Rudolph was issued by the United States Postal
Service on November 6, 2014.
Robert L. May created Rudolph in 1939, as an assignment for Chicago-based
Montgomery Ward. The retailer had been buying and giving away coloring
books for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own
book would save money. Rudolph was supposed to be a moose but that was
changed because a reindeer seemed friendly. May considered naming the
reindeer Rollo or Reginald before deciding upon using the name Rudolph In
its first year of publication, Montgomery Ward had distributed 2.5 million
copies of Rudolph's story. The story is written as a poem in anapestic
tetrameter, the same meter as A Visit from St. Nicholas (also known as
'Twas the Night Before Christmas). Publication and reprint rights for the
book Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are controlled by Pearson PLC.
Of note is the change in the cultural significance of a red nose. In
popular culture, a bright red nose was then closely associated with chronic
alcoholism and drunkards, and so the story idea was initially rejected. May
asked his illustrator friend at Montgomery Ward, Denver Gillen, to draw
cute reindeer, using zoo deer as models. The alert, bouncy character Gillen
developed convinced management to support the idea.
Maxton Books published the first mass-market edition of Rudolph and a
sequel, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Shines Again, in 1954. In 1991,
Applewood Books published Rudolph's Second Christmas, an unpublished sequel
that Robert May wrote in 1947. In 2003, Penguin Books issued a reprint
version of the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with new artwork by
Lisa Papp. Penguin also reprinted May's sequels, Rudolph Shines Again and
Rudolph's Second Christmas (now retitled Rudolph to the Rescue)'.
* 'In 1941, The song 'White Christmas', by Bing Crosby is introduced.
- From Wikipedia: 'The first public performance of the song was by Bing
Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941'.
'The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by Holiday Inn's
first hit song: 'Be Careful, It's My Heart'. By the end of October 1942,
'White Christmas' topped the 'Your Hit Parade' chart. It remained in that
position until well into the new year' Holiday Inn, was a Bing Crosby
Christmas movie, in which the song was also performed. .
* 'In 1962, The movie 'To Kill a Mockingbird', starring Gregory Peck, is
released.
- From Wikipedia: 'The film, widely considered to be one of the greatest
ever made, earned an overwhelmingly positive response from critics. A box
office success, it earned more than 10 times its budget. The film won three
Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Peck, and was nominated for eight,
including Best Picture'. .
* 'In 1963, The Walt Disney movie 'The Sword in the Stone' is released.
- From Wikipedia: 'The film is based on the novel of the same name, first
published in 1938 as a single novel. It was later republished in 1958 as
the first book of T. H. White's tetralogy The Once and Future King'. .
* 'In 1990, The first successful trial run of the World Wide Web is
completed. .
- From Wikipedia: 'The World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or the Web) is an
information space where documents and other web resources are identified by
Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), interlinked by hypertext links, and can
be accessed via the Internet. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented
the World Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first web browser computer
programme in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland.
The proposal was modelled after the SGML reader Dynatext by Electronic Book
Technology, a spin-off from the Institute for Research in Information and
Scholarship at Brown University. The Dynatext system, licensed by CERN, was
a key player in the extension of SGML ISO 8879:1986 to Hypermedia within
HyTime, but it was considered too expensive and had an inappropriate
licensing policy for use in the general high energy physics community,
namely a fee for each document and each document alteration. A NeXT
Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the world's first web server and also
to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990,
Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first
web browser (which was a web editor as well) and the first web server. The
first web site, which described the project itself, was published on 20
December 1990'.
* 'In 2004, The Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully
landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.
- From Wikipedia: The combined Cassini–Huygens spacecraft was launched from
Earth on October 15, 1997. Huygens separated from the Cassini orbiter on
December 25, 2004, and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005 near the Xanadu
region. This was the first and, so far, only landing ever accomplished in
the outer Solar System. It touched down on land, although the possibility
that it would touch down in an ocean was also taken into account in its
design. The probe was designed to gather data for a few hours in the
atmosphere, and possibly a short time at the surface. It continued to send
data for about 90 minutes after touchdown. It remains the most distant
landing of any human-made craft'. .
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