By Dr. Patt Schwab with Dorothy Wilhelm.
With record breaking temperatures and quite a lot of flooding, it’s hard to think about stepping outdoors. Brrrr. But, if you feel you must, there are some intriguing things going on in January. Like the Saturday, January 21, 2023 (10:00 AM – 1:00 PM) at Chambers Creek Regional Park.
Do you want to build a snowman? Enjoy the winter weather while crafting at Chambers Creek Regional Park North Meadow as you learn to make your own snow! You can build a personal snowman or have a friendly snowball fight with your family! Music, hot cocoa, and plenty of laughter will be provided to keep you warm. Admission and parking are free.
Here are a few ideas for your own January Red Letter Days celebration from Dr. Patt Schwab, humorist, professional speaker, and author of The Obscure Holiday eBooks.
The Obscure Holidays eBook
January Days of the Week to Celebrate
January 1: Get a Life Day – As a New Year unfolds, mix in some fresh ideas and projects to make the life you get more interesting, fun, and useful, all year long.
January 1: Z Day -This day is a gift to all those who, simply because of their last name, spent their elementary school years standing at the back of the line. Today is specifically designated for them. Regardless of age, they get to be the first, not just in line at school, but at the grocery store, the movies, at bat, at everything they do today. Let those “A” named folks get a chance to feel what you put up with!
January 2: Someday We’ll Laugh About This Week begins. Celebrate with a Wine and Cheese party where everyone can whine about what went wrong over the holidays. The person who, by group vote, whines best gets to take home any leftover wine.
January 2:Happy Mew Year for Cats Day – A time to help them get their kitty equilibrium back if they were stressed by New Year’s celebrating. Special treats help, but what works best is lots of quiet indoor loving, mixed with occasional apologies.
January 3- Fruitcake Toss Day -If you haven’t eaten that Holiday Fruitcake by now, it’s time to toss it. So say the ignorant. Fruitcakes have long served as a topic of love, dislike, or even songs at Christmas. Popular as table decorations and re-gift items, they have developed a reputation that outshines all other holiday desserts. Many have also served as joke material on late-night talk-shows. These fascinating cakes date back to early Christian times in Rome when monks discovered alcohol-soaked fruit helped cake last longer.
The longevity of fruitcakes has made them special to many: The one taken on the Apollo Space mission returned with the crew, and is displayed at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C.
Wedding fruitcakes have been popular with British royalty from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, up to Kate Middleton and Prince William. Many of their fruitcakes are also in museums today.
January 5 – Twelfth Night – marks the end of Christmas festivities, religious and secular
January 5 – George Washington Carver: Brilliant, Black, Agricultural Scientist, Author, Inventor, Teacher, and former slave. (Born 1864, date unknown— Died Jan 5, 1943) He was raised by his former owners Mr. and Mrs. Carver, after his mother was brutally murdered. Susan Carver taught him the basics of reading and
writing. He would later go on to Simpson College where he studied art, music, and botany. He became the first Black student not only to study botany there, but the first to teach it. A few years later, George Washington Carver joined the faculty at the Tuskegee Institute. There, he determined that his mission in life was to help former enslaved people become self-sufficient through farming. In so doing, he became nationally recognized as an inventor and a botanist with an emphasis on farming. Since farming methods were important to both White and Black farmers, his fame grew rapidly. His greatest discovery, that of the importance of crop rotation, revolutionized farming. He created scores of inventions, most famous were his work with peanuts and soybeans.
January 6: National Smith Day — for the 2+ million Smiths in the U.S. to celebrate something — ANYthing!
January 10: National Rubber Ducky Day – What makes THIS day special is that in 1992, a container ship, traveling from Hong Kong to Tacoma, WA. was hit by a terrific Pacific Ocean storm. It blew 2 crates from the ship. They crashed into each other, freeing their contents, which happened to be 29,000 Rubber Duckies.In addition to nearby Tacoma, to date, the duckies have shown up on the coasts of Washington, Alaska, Australia, Chile, and Hawaii. Fifteen years after the initial crash they actually made it through the Arctic ocean, to the spot where the Titanic sank, and on to the coast of Scotland. In the process, the only folks really happy about all this are the scientists who learned a great deal studying the currents the Duckies used, and, of course, the folks who found a friendly rubber duckie on their beach.
January 12: National Clean Off Your Desk Day— Read, file, dump stuff. You’ll feel so good afterwards. (At least that’s what we’ve been told.)
January 12: Stick to your New Year’s Resolution Day – Come on! It’s not even 2 weeks. You can hang in a little longer!
January 13: Make Your Dreams Come True Day – Stop wishing on a star. Get to work on that dream: read what you need to read, connect with folks who can help, practice what you need to learn, get into the shape, mental and physical, you need to be in. Stop making excuses!
January 15: World’s Largest Office Building, the Pentagon, is completed (1943) Constructed during World War II, the unique five sided construction it illustrated for the world that the determination and united nature of the US Military.The Pentagonhas 6.5 million square feet of floor space and supports some 23,000 military and civilian employees. Ground was broken for the construction on September 11, 1941. Ironically, the only time it has been damaged was September 11, 2001, when five al Qaeda hijackers flew a plane into the western side of the building, killing themselves and 184 others in the building. The building was quickly repaired and a small memorial and chapel added at the point of impact.
January 16: Appreciate a Dragon Day -Today, in schools and libraries children get to play games with the dragons of their choice. If they are lucky, their teachers fill them in on some intriguing background:
Dragons have been a part of world history as far back as 4,500 BCE. Not just big fire-breathing animals, dragons have a history of bringing Good Fortune, Entertainment, Harvest and Prosperity — especially in China. They are also very loyal and powerful supporters of their human friends.
For the Chinese, the next Year of the Dragon starts February 10, 2024.
January 18: Winnie the Pooh Day – in honor of author A.A. Milne’s birth (1882)
This a big deal over 141 books, plus songs, movies and toys, Winnie the Pooh is one of the most popular of children’s attractions. He came on the scene in 1926, and is still well known by children, and especially their parents, today. The Pooh books have been translated into many languages, rising to the position of being the only Latin book ever featured on the New York Times Best Seller list: Winnie ille Pu (1960). The big news is that now that all of the Winnie the Pooh books came into public domain, every theater company in the US in preparing a production.
January 21: One-Liners Day – Get to work, let yourself be challenged by these:
A termite walks into the bar and asks, “Is the bar tender here?”
The problem with kleptomaniacs is that they always take things, literally.
I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around.
I always take life with a grain of salt. . . And a slice of lemon. And a shot of tequila.
I just burned 2,000 calories! It’s the last time I leave brownies in the oven while I take a nap.
January 26: The World’s Largest Diamond – the 3,106-carat Cullinan, was found in South Africa in 1905. The Cullinan’s 3,106-carats weighs in at 1.3 pounds. By comparison, what does that diamond you’re wearing weigh?
January 27: The “Introducing the Beatles” album is released in the US in 1964.It’s so successful that on the same day in 1967, the Beatles signed a 9 year worldwide contract with EMI records. Frequently called “the greatest band of all time”, these four working-class guys from Northern England had what has been called “a crazy combination of ambition, talent, and-–most of all—arrogance.” (Andrew Romano)
January 28: Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion (1986) causes the first ever NASA in-flight deaths. It quickly became quickly became clear that the deaths were due to bureaucratic errors. The seven astronauts aboard all died, 73 seconds after lift-off. The pilot, Michael Smith, looked at the right wing and realized that the cold Florida morning had stiffened the rubber O-rings that held together the booster sections containing the explosive fuel. Because the rings couldn’t fully expand, they left a tiny gap that was nonetheless enough for the superheated fuel to burn through and create an explosion in only 3 seconds.
January 30: Have Fun at Work Day – Face it, the holidays are over and things are getting dull. It’s a great time to create a team building event, at work, in the classroom, the community center, wherever it’s needed. If today doesn’t work for your group, by all means select another one (select a new day or a new group – whichever works best).
January 30: Inane Answering Message Day – Time to change your message —especially if it’s too cutsie, obnoxious, pointless, old, or long – although a long message often gets rid of unwanted callers.
January 31: Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day— The last day in January is set aside to relieve lingering stress by popping all the bubbles left in your holiday bubble wrap.
That’s All Folks!
Since Dr. Patt Schwab issued her first Obscure Holiday eBooks, she’s developed a talent for finding weird, wild, and surprisingly informative days to celebrate.
You can find Patt Schwab’s Obscure Holiday eBooks on Amazon. Just look for her name. You can hear Patt Schwab and Dorothy Wilhelm on the Swimming Upstream Radio Show. A new edition of the podcast on the first Monday of every month. The link to her books is below and she’ll be back next month with more great Red Letter Days to celebrate.
