One Year Later

Can you believe it has been a year? Boy that was fast. Although we are a bit sad to see it go, it is time for the tree to come down. Will we miss it? Certainly. (However, we will not miss being mocked by our so-called "friends.") But it is time for us to get our living room back. So goodbye Holiday Tree and thank you for the simple joy you brought to our life in 2011.

Christmas

Holiday: Christmas
Date: December 25, 2011
History: This holiday is quite simple; it's the celebration of Jesus' birth. Of course, we don't really know the exact day Jesus was born, but we've been celebrating it on December 25 since the early to mid 4th century. To learn more about the real gift of Christmas visit http://lds.org/topic/christmas
Interesting Fact: American mistletoe, the kind most often associated with kissing, is one of 1,300 species of mistletoe worldwide but one of only two that are native to the United States. The other is dwarf mistletoe.

Day of Thanks

Holiday: Thanksgiving
Date: November 24, 2011
History: Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a day of family, food and football. This holiday tradition traces back to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth. However, there is plenty of debate about where the first Thanksgiving was actually held. The first Thanksgiving celebrated on the same date by all the states was in 1863. It was Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed the date to be the final Thursday in November. In 1941 however, federal legislation changed the unified date to the fourth Thursday in November.
Interesting Facts: Sarah Josepha Hale wrote letters to politicians for around 40 years campaigning to make Thanksgiving an official holiday. Minnesota is the top turkey-producing state in America. Cranberry production in the U.S. is expected to reach 750 million pounds this year. The largest pumpkin pie ever baked weighed 2,020 pounds and measured just over 12 feet long. Snoopy has appeared as a giant balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade more times than any other character in history.

All Hallows' Eve

Holiday: Halloween
Date: October 31, 2011
History: History.com describes it best: "Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off raomaing ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints' Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows' Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gathering, costumes and sweet treats."
Interesting Facts: One quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween. Carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns originated hundreds of years ago in Ireland. However, they made them out of turnips or potatoes since it wasn't until Irish immigrants arrived in America that they discovered pumkins. Haunted house attractions bring in about half a billion dollars annually. Halloween is the second most commercially successful holiday world-wide after Christmas.

ITLAPD

Holiday: Talk Like A Pirate Day
Date: September 19, 2011
History: "Talk Like A Pirate Day is an original concept created in a moment of temporary insanity by John Baur and Mark Summers." The history of how this "holiday" came to be is quite entertaining and we just cannot do it justice here. So please head on over to http://www.talklikeapirate.com/about to read how this phenomenon got started.
Interesting Facts: This is Talk Like A Pirate Day, not Dress Like A Pirate Day. According to the Pirate Guys, there is already a Dress Like A Pirate Day...it's called Halloween. Also, there is no special term for a woman pirate. "Oh sure, you can refer to a woman as a 'wench,' and that has a piratey feel. But technically, a woman pirate is still a pirate. In fact, using the term 'woman pirate' as if that's somehow different than 'pirate' completely misses the point: your cargo's been stolen, your ship is sinking and you might be dead. That's the point. Everything else is just details."

Shirtless Day

See pictures in the rest of the posts. We have decided to leave our shirtless men on the tree indefinitely.

Holiday: Go Shirtless Day
Date: September 3, 2011
History: We were not able to find much written about the history of this "holiday." We just really like it and felt it deserved it's own day on the holiday tree. Every September 3rd is "Go Shirtless Day" in downtown San Antonio.
Interesting Fact: This special day applies to men only.

The Non-Holiday Tree

Holiday: None
Date: August
History: August is notorious for being holiday free. Sure, August is a busy month. But it's free from any major holidays. We did our research and found several bizarre and unique holidays that happen during the month of August, but nothing piqued our interest enough to decorate. Plus, we're busy this month! So our holiday tree currently sits barren and empty. Rest assured though, we've got big plans for next month.
Interesting Facts: Some of the bizarre and unique holidays we discovered in August include: National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, Work Like a Dog Day, National Mustard Day, Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day, Middle Child's Day, Ride the Wind Day, Just Because Day and More Herbs, Less Salt Day.