December 26th is...

Boxing Day
- Boxing Day is celebrated in England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other former British commonwealth countries. It is a traditional celebration dating back to the Middle Ages, of which the primary practice is the giving of gifts to employees or to people in a lower social class. On 26th December, after all the Christmas parties, the lord of the manor would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would receive a box full of such goods, hence "Boxing Day." According to this tradition, the lord of the manor did not volunteer, but was obliged to supply these gifts.

National Thank-you Note Day
- The presents have been unwrapped and put away. It’s official: the holidays are winding down. Now it’s time to write those thank you notes. National Thank You Note Day recognizes the importance of showing gratitude toward loved ones.

National Whiner's Day
- A day dedicated to whiners, especially those who return Christmas gifts and need lots of attention. People are encouraged to be happy about what they do have, rather than unhappy about what they don’t have.

Recyclable Packaging Day
- I couldn't find any info on this holiday, but perhaps it's to remind us to gather up the gift bags, cloth bags, ribbons and tissue paper and either save them to use them again next year or make sure to put them into the recycling bin instead of the garbage.

Awful Tie Day
- Today is the date to wear the ties your children give you, before they suffer unfortunate accidents in the washing machine.

Saint Stephen's Day
- One of the seven deacons named by the apostles to distribute alms. Died during first century. Feast Day is Dec 26 and is observed as a public holiday in Austria and the Republic of Ireland.

Radium Discovered
- French scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the element radium in 1898, for which they later won the Nobel Prize for Physics.

National Candy Cane Day
- The candy cane was originally a straight, hard, and all-white candy stick invented by French priests in the early 1400s. The cane shape is traditionally credited to a choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany, who, legend has it, in 1670 bent straight sugar sticks into canes to represent a shepherd's staff, and gave them to children at church services. Another theory is that, as people decorated their Yule trees with food, the bent candy cane was invented as a functional solution. Candy with red stripes first appeared in the early 1900s.

National Coffee Percolator Day
- A coffee percolator (caffettiera in Italian) it is a type of pot used to brew coffee. The name stems from the word "percolate" which means to cause (a solvent) to pass through a permeable substance especially for extracting a soluble constituent. It's not used much anymore but this day celebrates the percolator that's used for making coffee. Do you have an old one tucked away in your kitchen cabinet?


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- This was updated by Catherine on December 26, 2011 -

Category: CDN, December, US, worldwide