First up is Be an Angel Day. This holiday was originally created by Jayne Howard Feldman in 1993 and is designed to get people all over the world to perform random acts of kindness. Making the world a better place one day at a time: a noble cause indeed.
I believe that as a Writing 101 instructor I would certainly qualify as an angel! LOL! Although I truly love what I do (most of the time), it can take the strength of the gods to get through some of their papers! I think my job qualifies as angelic behavior. Wouldn't you agree fellow 101 instructors?
Questions?
Our next holiday is Earth Over Shoot Day. From an ecological standpoint, Earth Overshoot Day is the day each year when the earth will exhaust its allowance from Mother Nature. Since the early '90s, the date has been steadily moving backward in the year from October all the way up until this year's date of exhaustion.
Pretty scary.
I'm not sure if this is exactly a day to "celebrate" but we can certainly do our part to save on the Earth's resources by walking rather than driving, having reusable containers (water bottles, food containers, coffee cups), and turning off lights when not using them. Let's lighten the mood a bit with our next holiday: National Tooth Fairy Day. As kids, most of us are told that loosing our baby teeth isn't such a bad thing because a magical, dentally-inclined creature comes around at night collecting baby teeth in exchange for an unestablished sum of money (my thought: whatever this "creature" can find under the couch cushions). Without this fairy tale, I sincerely believe that kids would feel self-conscious and hurt by the loss of their teeth. Now, I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but most adults know that the Tooth Fairy does not exist. However, if you're a fan of the Santa Clause 3,
Or Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson,
The Tooth Fairy totally exists!
Our friend Mica let me in on the secret that she still has some baby teeth that may have fallen out today, but she was unwilling to explicitly try to remove them (spoil sport)! I guess the Tooth Fairy will simply have to wait for her teeth!
Finally, we have a holiday that comes to us straight out of the High Middle Ages: St. Guinefort Day. Guinefort was a greyhound whose main job was to protect a family living in France. As the legend goes, Guinefort's family went out of the house and left him in charge of protecting the baby sleeping in its crib. While the baby slept, a snake slithered its way into the room and had its fangs set on the baby, but Guinefort had other ideas. The dog chased the snake around the room (knocking the crib over) and finally caught it. He killed the snake clamped within his jaws and was covered in the snake's blood. The parents heard the commotion, came into the room, saw the crib laying on the floor without a baby, and the dog's bloody jowls. Assuming the worst, the father killed the greyhound and realized moments later that the baby was simply laying on the floor unharmed. They also found the snake's corpse. Feeling awful (as they should) for unjustly killing the dog, they buried Guinefort's body and made a small shrine to his memory. The village developed a myth about the dog that it could intercede on behalf of your children if the child is sick. Parents would willingly bring their sick babies out to a grove and leave the child under a tree surrounded by candles. If in the morning, the child was still there and healthy, they would know that St. Guinefort had found the child worthy of saving. However, if the child was missing (presumably taken by wolves) or lie there dead, Guinefort had not felt the need to intercede. Now, while this may sound crazy, many believed this to actually work. Personally, I find this to be the only interesting saint's life out there! So, today I spread the word of St. Guinefort's life and legend. I hope you did as well!
So regal.
And we're done!
CS, out.
The teeth remained in my mouth, none of them fell out unfortunately, oh well, maybe next tooth holiday!
ReplyDeleteOh, no Tooth Fairy money for you! :(
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