12/12/21 Happy Sunday!

Sunday 12/12/21

Celebrate National Ambrosia, Ding-a-Ling, Poinsettia, International Sound Check, 12-hour Fresh Breath, Worldwide Candle Lighting, and Choral Day.

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Poinsettia Day celebrates the beautiful red flowering plant that has come to be associated with Christmas, the poinsettia. The plant is native to Mexico, where it was used by the Aztecs; its flowers were used to produce red dye, and its sap to treat fevers. Franciscan missionaries in Mexico used it in the 17th century as part of nativity processions, the first time it became associated with Christianity. A story has been passed down about a poor Mexican girl who didn't have anything to honor baby Jesus with at a procession. An angel told her any gift from the heart was a good gift, so she gathered weeds from the roadside. When she placed them around the manger they transformed into poinsettias. In Mexico the flowers are called La Flores de la Nochebuena, or the Flowers of the Holy Night, and are displayed on December 12, the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This day marks the beginning of the Christmas season.

Poinsettias take their name from Joel Roberts Poinsett, a botanist and the first Minister to Mexico, who sent cuttings of the plant back to his home in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1837, William Hickling Prescott, a gardener and historian, was asked to rename the plant and named it after Poinsett, because of his achievements in government and horticulture. By some odd coincidence, Poinsett died on December 12, the same day as the Day of the Virgin Guadalupe, and the same date that would become National Poinsettia Day.

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The Beatles‘ Let It Be vaults from No. 10 to No. 1 for its first week atop Billboard‘s Top Rock Albums chart.

The set tops the tally dated Dec. 11 following the Nov. 25 premiere of the Disney+ docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, which chronicles the 1970 album’s recording.

The Beatles now boast five No. 1s on Top Rock Albums, which began in 2006, as Let It Be follows Love (2007), On Air: Live at the BBC Volume 2 (2013), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, the latter two reigning following anniversary reissues in 2017 and 2019, respectively.