27th December : Significance

If animals are your passion then Visit the Zoo Day gives you a great opportunity to really get close to some of the most intriguing and engaging species on the planet. No matter where you live, your usually not far from a zoo, so why not go for a visit and find out more? Some people think of zoos only as cruel prisons where countless animals are kept, bored to death, from the moment they're born till the moment they die. But these days zoos are at the forefront of much of the research which goes on into animal behaviour and how best to protect vulnerable animals from extinction. Many zoos have breeding programmes running, where they work with other facilities around the world to increase the numbers of endangered populations. In most of the better zoos around the globe, the enclosures the animals are kept in are relatively roomy and attempt to mirror an animal's natural environment as closely as possible. Some zoos house indigenous species as well as or rather than those from further away. All in all, zos are fascinating (and often smelly) places where we can get a lot closer to nature than we would ever have the chance to otherwise, and that's definitely worth trying at least once or twice in life.

History of Visit The Zoo Day

The idea of having exotic animals confined to a certain area for other people to view or observe is not new at all. The earliest such enclosure , called a "menagerie discovered by excavators in Egypt and is believed to date back to about 3500 B.C. King Solomon of Israel was a known ancient animal collector, as were King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia and Alexander the Great. Wild animals were also collected to be used in the arenas during the Roman Games, though most of those died violent deaths after being pitted against each other for the amusement of the crowd. Later, British kings kept wild animals in the Tower of London, with the price of viewing them being a small dog or cat that could be used to feed them. The first actual zoo, created not to stroke the ego of a monarch, but rather to educate and entertain, was opened in London in 1828.

How to Celebrate Visit the Zoo Day

The best way to celebrate this day is to visit a zoo yourself, and perhaps take your partner or your children with you. You have likely been to the zoo before, however, so you are aware f how people just move from one animal to the next, never paying any of them nearly as much attention as they should. So this tie, try to make your trip to the zoo different. Make a point of reading up on several specific animals beforehand in order to know as much a bout them as possible before you see them live. Then, spend more than the few moments most people spend gazing idly at the creature before moving right onto the next one. Study it, observe it, try to get the best look possible, take note of the animal's behaviour, which you can later discuss with your partner or family. This Visit the Zoo Day, remember why zoos were created in the first place, and take advantage of the full learning potential they offer.

It was a favorite activity in our earliest school years, and many families would share it as a familiar project around the holidays. Surely it ended up with numerous small flakes of paper on the ground as thick as the snow outside, but it was accompanied by a warmth of time spent creatively, and the unique designs that came out of everyone's individual efforts. Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day encourages us to set out to do it again, and create snowflakes that will persist long after the last crystal of ice has melted into water as the seasons change.

History of Make Cut-out Snowflakes Day

What most people don't know about this art is that is truly ancient, and in fact is founded in the traditional Japanese art-form of Origami, specifically a variation known as Kirigami. The process at the beginning is the same, both art forms involve the intricate folding of a piece of paper into a desired shape, though that's where the similarities end. In Kirigami you then unfold the piece and place cuts in the desired place. Obviously the art of snowflake cutting takes this one step variance further, you typically cut the piece while it is still folded, and then unfold it to reveal the desired shape.

There's no denying that the unique design of each snowflake is beautiful, and the ability to create either a single piece, or to intricately cut a piece of paper that has been folded over multiple times to create a string of elaborately cut snowflakes means you have near infinite variations you can end with. Such is the beauty of Kirigami. Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day encourages you to pick up this art again, and create your own unique and special snowflake.

How to celebrate Make Cut-out Snowflakes Day

Well, it all starts with learning the basics of folding paper to create a snowflake, available through multiple websites and videos throughout the web. From there it's a simple matter of being creative with your scissors and seeing what results. With practice you will be able to make truly stunning designs that will serve to enhance your holiday spirit. Don't think it ends there, with the encroaching Valentine's Day on the horizon, you can take this art to the next level and create intricate lace-like heart streamers to beautify your home and add a little romance to the holiday. Then it's on to bunnies and eggs for Easter! Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day encourages you to learn the art again, and then carry it throughout the year!

Fruitcakes, we've all seen them in the movies or in grandma's kitchen. The heavy and dark cake that looks like it went through seven stages of baking and sounds like a fist thumping against a wooden table when set down on a surface. Yet, there is a day made for it. That's right, this day is called Fruitcake Day and it's made for the celebration of the cake that we all seem to find synonymous with a brick.

History of Fruitcake Day

While none of us know the true creator of the fruitcake, many historians believe that fruitcakes originated from Rome, and one of the earliest recipes known comes from ancient Rome listing pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins that were mixed into a barley mash. Then there are records from the Middle Ages documenting that they added honey, spices, and preserved fruits into the original mix. Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies along with the discovery that high concentrations of the sugar could preserve fruits, ended up creating an enormous excess of candied fruits, thus resulting in making fruit cakes more affordable and popular in regions around the world.

Fruitcakes have an incredible shelf life, they can remain on the shelves for many, many years and still be edible and non-harmful to the human body. An example of this is in a 2003 episode of The Tonight Show, where Jay Leno sampled a piece of a fruitcake baked in 1878 which was kept as an heirloom by a family in Michigan. For years now, the fruitcake has been a joke in American culture, being ridiculed for its name and how it appears. A recurring example of this can be found in a variety of television shows and movies, where the fruitcake will fall on a person's body and they will complain about it being as hard as a brick.