December 4: National Cookie Day
No need to worry about getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar today — it’s National Cookie Day. Go for it! Sweet and small, cookies are flat or slightly-raised cakes eaten as desserts or snacks. There are many different kinds of cookies, most of which are made from dough made with butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. Other ingredients are then added to create various flavors and textures. Cookies are full of all sorts of delicious goodness, from nuts to fruit to chocolate. They can be either delightfully crumbly or sinfully chewy. Not every culture has the same name for them, however. Examples: In England, they are called “biscuits.” In Scotland, ask for a “cookie,” you’ll get a small bun. The Spanish call them “galletas.” In Germany, they’re “keks”; in Italy they have several names, depending on the type.
It is believed that, in 7th century AD, Persians were some of the first to grow and harvest sugar cane, after which cookies appear. Well, “believed” is a pretty loosy-goosy word, but let’s grant that belief. Movement of people for trade and war brought sugar into Europe and, by the 14th century, cookies had come there as well, present in all levels of society, from royal dining tables to street vendors.
The word “cookie,” first appeared in print in 1695. It comes from the Dutch word koekje, which translates to “little cake.” It was the Dutch who brought them to the New World in the late 1620s and baked them in their settlements. Bless you, Dutch. The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, when the Dutch in New York provided 800 cookies for a funeral. As other Europeans migrated to the Americas, they brought their own cookie recipes. Americans eventually began developing distinctly American cookies, the Chocolate Chip Cookie being one of the most famous.
In 1987, Matt Nader of San Francisco’s Blue Chip Cookie Company created National Cookie Day. Since then, people from various countries all around the world have been celebrating National Cookie Day. In fact, a number of variations on National Cookie Day have taken hold, such as Oatmeal National Cookie Day and Bake Cookies Day.
Chocolate chip cookies — aka Toll House cookies — are America’s favorite. They were created in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, MA. Other popular kinds of cookies include oatmeal, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, and sugar. Some cookies are filled with fruit — such as dates and raisins — and look like sandwiches. Nabisco’s Fig Newton, for example. Some cookies are associated with the holidays, such as macaroons, pfeffernuse, and gingerbread. And some cookies come with a fortune! With so many kinds , it is easy to stay busy on National Cookie Day.
December 5: National Blue Jeans Day
An American cultural icon, and one of the most popular pieces of clothing in the world, blue jeans — or simply, jeans — are worn and celebrated on National Blue Jeans Day.
Blue jeans got their start in the 19th century. Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, NV, had been making pants for miners, but they weren’t sturdy enough. Pockets and a button fly were particularly susceptible to tears. In 1871, a miner’s wife asked him to make them stronger, and he responded by using metal fasteners to make copper riveted trousers. On May 20, 1873, Davis partnered with Levi Strauss to patent the riveted pants, and then to sell them, with Strauss running the business and Davis working as production manager. By the time their patent expired in 1890, Levi Strauss & Co. was well on its way to being one of the most iconic brands of jeans. That same year they started making their pants with blue denim, which was more flexible than the duck cloth they had been using. Voila: blue jeans!
To be clear, Davis and Strauss did not invent blue jeans, but they were the first to produce them commercially in the US. These pants, known as waist overalls, caught on fast among all types of American laborers. From ranch hands to railroad workers, factory employees to farmers, waist overalls were like a uniform for the working-class American. Workers loved them because their dark indigo color hid stains from oil and dirt. They also appreciated their durability because a pair of denim overalls could withstand the rigors of manual labor.
Blue jeans eventually moved from workwear to realm of casualwear and fashion. This shift was evident as early as the 1930s. Thanks to Western films with cowboys in jeans, ordinary Americans began to embrace jeans as part of their everyday fashion. In the 1950s, at the height of America’s conservative era, denim jeans were seen as non-conformist, synonymous with actors like James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause. American youth jumped on the bandwagon; however, it was primarily men who wore jeans. Actress Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to wear jeans in 1957. Whither Brigitte Bardot, so went the young men of the ‘50s.
By the 1960s and ‘70s, jeans had achieved their cultural status. They had become associated with rebellion, greasers, and teenagers, embraced first by youth subcultures, then by young people in general. By the 1970s, they were part of general fashion and casualwear.
Today, it is estimated that Americans own 7 pairs of jeans, per capita. Jeans have undergone dozens of changes over the years — from long and baggy to short and tight, dark to light, colorful to faded. Few clothes have such a variety of aesthetic options than denim jeans.
By the 1980s and 1990s, jeans were considered unisex. Variations in style, patterns, colors, and sizes were numerous. Waist overalls made a brief comeback, albeit as a fashion statement and not for practicality. Today, almost all types of jeans coexist, a rare thing for clothing and a testament to the versatility of denim. Any and all of these are celebrated and worn on National Blue Jeans Day.
December 6: Microwave Oven Day
Microwave ovens are great for reheating leftovers, making popcorn, melting butter and chocolate, prep work for more-traditional cooking, and heating water. These are just a few of the reasons why microwaves deserve their own day.
It all began in WWII. The improvement of the cavity magnetron — which made the production of small wavelengths (microwaves) possible — allowed the magnetron to be used in WWII in radar technology, rather than, say, making popcorn. Following the war, Percy Spencer, a Raytheon employee was testing the new radar technology. He accidentally discovered the heating effect of the technology when a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. He then tried some popcorn and got it to pop, and followed this by trying to cook an egg, which exploded in the face of another experimenter. Spencer found out he could feed the power from the magnetron into a metal box where it couldn’t escape. Food placed in the box rose in temperature quickly.
On October 8, 1945, Raytheon filed a patent for a microwave oven. In 1947, Raytheon produced the Radarange, a microwave which stood almost 6 feet tall and cost $5,000 — almost $70,000 in 2023 dollars. Raytheon licensed its patents to Tappan, which introduced a microwave in 1955, but it was still too large and expensive for everyday home use. It cost $1,295, which is almost $15,000 in 2023 dollars. In 1965, Raytheon acquired Amana, and introduced a countertop microwave in 1967 for $495, about $4,500 in 2023 dollars.
Soon afterwards, Litton developed a microwave oven that is similar in shape to the ones that are popular today, and it helped popularize home microwaves. In 1971, there were about 40,000 microwaves in use in the US, but by 1975 there were a million. Although some early models leaked, giving them a bad reputation, their popularity continued to grow. In the 1980s, recipes abounded, as well as consumer goods such as microwave cupcake kits. Most of these things weren’t very good. Still, by 1986 about 25% of households in the US had a microwave, and by 1997 the number had risen to over 90%.
Microwave ovens use non-ionizing radiation that has a frequency between that of radio and infrared wavelengths. Unlike X-rays, which use ionizing radiation, and can be harmful, the non-ionizing radiation from microwaves is safe. A process called dielectric heating allows water, fat, and other substances to absorb energy. Molecules in these substances are electric dipoles: they have a positive charge on one end and a negative charge on the other. The molecules move as they try to align themselves in a microwave, and that creates heat. Compared to conventional ovens, microwave ovens heat faster and further into food. Also in contrast to conventional ovens, microwaves usually don’t brown or caramelize foods. They simply don’t get hot enough to do so. Evidence suggests more nutrients are actually retained in food that is cooked in a microwave compared to in a conventional oven. With shorter cooking time, there is less leaching of nutrients into water. Although some people look down on microwaves as being a symbol of a fast-paced plastic-oriented society, they do serve many practical and useful purposes. And today is their day.
December 7: National Cotton Candy Day
Today celebrates cotton candy, a popular confection — that’s almost all sugar — at fairs, circuses, and amusement parks, around the world: small clouds of utter delight, floating multicolored strands of spun-sugar all wrapped around a stick or served in a bag. Everything from the machine that produces this treat, to the men and women who operate it, and the very flavor it leaves in your mouth is purely magical. And when that treat has gained notoriety around the world and utterly defines what it means to attend country fairs, circuses, and amusement parts, you know that it deserves a holiday of its very own. Hence National Cotton Candy Day.
There is some indication that cotton candy originated from “spun sugar” in Europe in the 19th century. However, in 1897, the world of spun-sugar took a hair-pin turn. The story and creation of machine-spun cotton candy, as we know it today, goes back to a handful of people at the turn of the 20th century. Ironically, some of them were dentists. In 1897, confectioner John C. Wharton and dentist William Morrison invented the electric-spinning cotton candy machine, for which they filed a patent. At the 1904 World’s Fair, in St. Louis, they introduced their confection as “fairy floss.” They sold more than 68,000 boxes of their treat, at 25 cents a box, for a total of more than $17,000 — that’s about $588,000 in 2023 dollars. Similarly, Thomas Patton also experimented in heating sugar to create cotton candy. His creation debuted at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus around 1900. Some sources conflate the Patton story with the Wharton and Morrison story, while some also claim it was Patton’s machine that was used at the World’s Fair, after it was tweaked by the Electric Candy Machine Company. Whatever the case, it’s clear that cotton candy debuted sometime around the turn of the 20th century. In 1921, another dentist, Josef Lascaux, built a machine and sold the treat to patients in his Louisiana office. He’s believed to be the one that changed the name to “cotton candy.”
In 1949, Gold Medal Products created an improved cotton candy machine that had a spring base. Most cotton candy machines are still made by this company today. Cotton candy machines are operated by putting a sugar called “floss sugar” into a small spinning bowl which heats up the sugar. As it spins and heats, it gets pulled out into a larger outer bowl by centrifugal force, where it solidifies in the air, and is caught by a stick or cone. Although cotton candy consists almost entirely of sugar, nowadays it is most often flavored and colored. Two of most popular varieties are blue raspberry and pink vanilla.
While we in America call it cotton candy, it actually has different names all around the world. In France, it isbarbe à papa, which means “papa’s beard.” Suikerspin is its moniker in the Netherlands, which means “sugar spider.” In Finland and Australia, it is still known as fairy floss. And in the UK, it is called candy floss.
December 8: Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day
Ever wonder what kind of reactions people would give you if they thought you had traveled from another time? Being able to travel through time to a different age or era is the dream of many scientists, sci-fi enthusiasts, and even historians. After all, we spend so much of our lives hearing about what happened in the past, be it 100, 1,000, or 1,000,000 years ago, that many of us would give anything to see the things that were happening then with our own eyes. Ever thought that one day there will be people who will look back and wish they could travel to our times? Or how many people in the 18th century who would have loved to see what life would look like in 2023? If you’ve never thought about either of these time-travel possibilities, it’s time you did. It will allow you to see the world in a whole new light and enjoy Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day to the fullest.
Pretend To Be a Time Traveler Day was started in 2007 by Dresden Codak — the webcomic name of a real guy named Aaron Diaz, one of the founders of Koala Wallop, a community of Alternative Webcomics started in 2005. Participants in the day pretend to be time travelers for an entire day, staying in character when they meet people.
Dresden Codak suggests 3 scenarios for a time-traveler-of-the-day. You can portray yourself as coming from:
a utopian future,
a dystopian future,
the past.
Codak goes further with advice. The utopian time traveler should “dress with moderately anachronistic clothing and speak in slang from varying decades.” For clothing, they should think about how the future is often portrayed in film and television. Star Trek can serve as a model. Time-travelers from a utopian future should also “show extreme ignorance at operating regular technology.” The dystopian-future time traveler should “dress like a crazy person with armor,” (this may be an exciting opportunity for all of you who own armor) and like a disheveled person who appears “very startled that they have gone back in time.” Last, the time traveler portraying themselves as from the past should dress in period clothing, such as from the Victorian era. They are to be amazed at everything that wasn’t around in their era, such as cars, airplanes, cell phones, televisions, and automatic doors. No matter which of these 3 aforesaid time-traveler-of-the-day roles you choose, you’re sure to turn heads and get others to become confused or question their own sanity.
The earliest mentions of time travel were always about moving forward. The first known mention of such a concept is in ancient (400 BC) Hindu mythology. Time travel has also been brought up in the Talmud and early Japanese tales. A bit more recently, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) tells us about how Ebeneezer Scrooge, is transported back and forth through time to witness various events in his own life. In 1895, H. G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine popularized the notion of a vehicle designed to transport its passengers forward and backward in time. The book’s protagonist travels to 802,701 AD and observes the future of the human race, before returning to tell the tale to his dinner guests. (The movie adaptation was created in 1960, then again in 2002.) Published time travel stories became yet again more complex in 1941 with Robert A Heinlen’s short story By His Bootstraps, which showed the protagonist occupying multiple time-frames at once through time travel, and therefore intersecting with different versions of himself. There are lots of other new stories fascinated by the idea of moving through time and space, including the film Back to the Future, which exploded onto screens in 1985. Meanwhile, in television, the BBC invented Doctor Who and zapped it into homes around the UK in 1963. The show featured a professional time traveler — The Doctor — adding new characters, storylines, universes, and actors over the years. Most recently a woman taken on the role of The Doctor.
December 9: National Llama Day
According to one source, National Llama Day was first celebrated in 1932, after it was recognized how important the llama was in Canada, of all places, following a drought in the province of Manitoba, where many livestock died, especially sheep. The llama is known for its hardiness, so if there were one animal that proved its resilience during a drought while others were dying, the llama was likely it.
Llamas have been an important livestock animal since the Incan Empire. They provided meat, and wool and carried goods over thousands of miles of Incan roads. Today, they are serve all of these purposes, as well as a few others. They can serve as livestock guardians, and companion animals, and are even important for animal shows. It’s no wonder that a holiday was created in their honor. This day can be observed by former and current llama owners, people who are curious about these animals, or people who are thinking about purchasing one of these animals. (No, we don’t think you can have one at Kendal.)
These unique and interesting animals are both smart and highly sociable. Llamas are camelids (like camels, but without the hump) closely related to the domesticated alpaca (which they are a bit larger than) as well as to the undomesticated vicuña and guanaco. Together, these four animals are known as lamoids. Llamas stand between 5 and 6.5 feet in height at their heads and between 3 and 4 feet at their shoulders, and they weigh between 250 and 450 pounds. Females are usually larger than males. Their fur can be solid, spotted, or have patterns, with a color palette including black, gray, beige, brown, red, and white. They are social animals that like to live with other llamas or herd animals. They can make a high-pitched scream, and they spit to assert dominance over other members of their pack and to deter predators. They almost always give birth to only 1 baby — known as a cria — at a time, which weighs about 20 to 35 pounds. Llamas live to be 15 or 20 years old.
With their big eyes and long eyelashes, llamas are rather adorable — and also a bit feisty! Though they were likely originally dwellers of both North and South America, llamas are believed to have gone extinct in North America during the last ice age. Llamas were domesticated by humans around 4,000 or even 5,000 years ago, starting in Peru and the Andes mountains. In modern times, llamas are also often kept domestically on farms, sometimes as guard animals for other flocks such as sheep or even alpacas.
Llama fleece has been used to make textiles in Peru for thousands of years. Today, the llama's soft fur undercoat is used to make garments and handicrafts, while the more coarse outer coat is used to make rugs and ropes. The hides are used to make leather, and the tallow is used to make candles. Sometimes llamas are eaten, and their excrement can even be burned for fuel.
There are millions of llamas in their native home of South America, principally in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Over 150,000 llamas can be found in the US. Llamas are herbivores that enjoy eating hay while grazing on green pastures, and they don’t need much water—which again illustrates their hardiness.
National Llama Day is observed from sunup to sundown. It appears to be a tongue-in-cheek holiday, and not many credible descriptions can be found about it elsewhere, but we’re going to treat it in a serious manner. After all, adorable as they are, llamas are serious animals. On the day, people dress like llamas, carve butter statues into the shape of llamas, sing songs about llamas, and play “traditional llama-related games.” A family member wears a llama costume while passing out gifts to children. A piece of llama fur is hung under a doorway and lovers kiss under it. “Llamatines” are sent to loved ones, sometimes along with candy shaped as llamas. A National Llama Day feast is held, and afterward, children go door to door asking for National Llama Day treats. If someone won’t give them any, they sometimes release llamas onto their lawns. (We don’t know if you can rent-a-llama for this purpose.)
December 10: Dewey Decimal System Day
The Dewey Decimal Classification has been in use for over 148-years and continues to be one of the most popular book classification systems in the world — despite efforts to eliminate its use in some libraries. As of 2021, more than 200,000 libraries in over 134 different countries are estimated to still be using this system. Its popularity is directly related to the fact that this system does an amazing job of keeping books organized and helping to make books easier to find.
Dewey Decimal System Day is observed annually on December 10 because that’s Melvil Dewey birthday. Melvil Dewey was an American librarian and library reformer who developed this library classification system in 1873 while employed at Amherst College Library. He developed his classification system using decimal numbers from Natale Battezzati’s library card system and a structure developed by Sir Francis Bacon. In 1876, he published A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. He would use this pamphlet to encourage feedback from other librarians.
In 1885, the second edition of the Dewey Decimal System was published. Between that year and 1942, several different editions of Dewey’s system were released with modifications and expansions as deemed necessary. By the late 1920s, this system was used in approximately 96% of responding public libraries and almost 90% of responding college libraries. In 1993, the first electronic version of this system was created. Over the past few years, however, the popularity of this system has begun to wane. Some libraries have changed to alternative classification systems.
Dewey’s system organizes books into 10 main classes or fields of knowledge, which are then divided into 10 smaller, more specialized subcategories. Each of these can be further broken down into another 100 numbers after a decimal point. Category revisions to the system have been made since it was created. For instance, computer science was not originally part of a class, as it did not exist.
The Dewey Decimal System is monitored by the Online Computer Library Center. As for Melvil Dewey, he became known as the “Father of Modern Librarianship,” and also became a proponent of the metric system, founding the American Metric Bureau. He has not been without controversy, however, and charges of antisemitism, racism, and sexual harassment have sullied his reputation. But on Dewey Decimal System Day we are not celebrating the man, but rather, the system of classification that he created that has made it easier to find a book at a library.
The ten classes of knowledge are as follows:
000 - Computer science, information, and general works
100 - Philosophy and psychology
200 - Religion
300 - Social sciences
400 - Language
500 - Science
600 - Technology
700 - Arts and recreation
800 - Literature
900 - History and geography