Wednesday 12/21/22
Celebrate:
Crossword Puzzle Day
Don't Make Your Bed Day
Forefathers' Day
Humbug Day
International Dalek Remembrance Day
National Coquito Day
National Flashlight Day
National French Fried Shrimp Day
National Hamburger Day
National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day
National Kiwi Fruit Day
National Look at the Bright Side Day
National Short Story Day
Phileas Fogg Win a Wager Day
Ribbon Candy Day
Short Girl Appreciation Day
Yule
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The winter solstice occurs today at 10:27 PM. Yes, this is the “shortest” day of the year, but let’s talk about how many minutes each day the daylight increases afterward.
As for things you can easily observe, the most obvious solstitial effect is that you can look out your most southwest facing window on Wednesday and again Thursday and see the Sun set at its leftmost position of the year. If you’re an early riser and see the Sun come up at around 7:15 AM, that will happen at its rightmost possible spot, in the east southeast.
starting Thursday, the 22nd, we stop losing daily sunlight which has been going on since last June, and instead finally start to increase it!
This gain will be minuscule at first, just a matter of seconds a day, but will steadily grow until daily daylight expands by three daily minutes per day in March.
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A language tutorial site called Preply examined 60 scripts of popular holiday movies to find out which have the most cuss words. Here are the Top 20:
1. "Bad Santa" (2003): 255 swear words
2. "The Ref" (1994): 86 swear words
3. "Better Watch Out" (2016): 82 swear words
4. "Die Hard" (1988): 77 swear words
5. "Just Friends" (2005): 46 swear words
6. "Black Christmas" (1974): 39 swear words
7. "Trading Places" (1983): 37 swear words
8. "Krampus" (2015): 37 swear words
9. "Love Actually" (2003): 36 swear words
10. "The Family Man" (2000): 32 swear words
11. "Fatman" (2020): 25 swear words
12. "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (1989): 23 swear words
13. "Last Christmas" (2019): 18 swear words
14. "Scrooged" (1988): 17 swear words
15. "Batman Returns" (1992): 14 swear words
16. "Shazam!" (2019): 14 swear words
17. "Surviving Christmas" (2004): 14 swear words
18. "Serendipity" (2001): 13 swear words
19. "A Christmas Story" (1983): 11 swear words
20. "Home Alone" (1990): 9 swear words
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PNC Bank does an annual study on how much it would cost to buy everything from the song.
The answer this year is $45,523, up 10.5%. Or if you bought the items over and over each day like the song suggests, that's 364 total gifts, and over $197,000.
Here's a breakdown of how much it would cost to buy or hire all 12 things . . .
Twelve drummers drumming . . . $3,267 to hire them.
Eleven pipers piping . . . $3,021.
Ten lords-a-leaping . . . $13,980. It's the most expensive gift on the list. It's based on how much it would cost to hire ten dancers from the Philadelphia ballet.
Nine ladies dancing . . . $8,308. Based on hiring nine women from a modern dance company in Philly.
Eight maids-a-milking . . . $58. Weird gift, but the cheapest on the list. That's eight women milking cows for an hour at the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
Seven swans-a-swimming . . . $13,125.
Six geese-a-laying . . . $720.
Five gold rings . . . $1,245, up 39%. That's a bigger jump than anything else on the list. It's for five 14-carat gold rings according to a national jewelry chain.
Four calling birds . . . $600.
Three French hens . . . $319.
Two turtle doves . . . $600.
And a partridge in a pear tree . . . $280. The partridge costs the same as last year. But fertilizer prices are up, so pear trees have jumped 26%.
And there is always the aftermath of all those gifts.
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Thomas Edison has gone down in history as one of America's greatest inventors. We can thank him for the light bulb, phonograph, and even the movie camera. But did you know he is also partly responsible, along with his friend Edward H. Johnson, for inventing Christmas lights?
According to the Library of Congress, Edison created the first strand of electric lights in 1880, which he hung outside his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, during Christmastime that year. However, it was Johnson, his partner at Edison Illumination Company, who, in 1882, became the first to wrap a strand of hand-wired red, white, and blue bulbs around a Christmas tree. And the rest, as they say, is history!
By the way, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree has over 25,000 lights.
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Putting up a Christmas tree has been a part of American holidays for years. However, it's a tradition that can be traced back to Germany.
According to History, "Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes." The custom didn't come to the U.S. until the late 1700s or early 1800s, via German settlers in Pennsylvania.
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The poinsettia, these beautiful red and green flowering plants have been associated with Christmas for over 100 years.
Back in 1828, the American minister to Mexico, Joel R. Poinsett, brought a poinsettia home to America from his post down south. Getting their name from Poinsett, the plants gained popularity in the U.S. after stores in New York began to sell them at Christmas in 1870 and by the 20th century, "they were a universal symbol of the holiday," according to History.
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the tallest Christmas tree ever cut was a 221-foot Douglas fir displayed in Seattle, Washington in 1950. 221 feet is more than 20 stories tall.
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