weird and wacky holidays happening in November

Make Your Own Head Day

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Today is Make Your Own Head Day. Grab anything: clay, a bar of soap, a roll of tinfoil, dryer lint, mashed potatoes, peanut butter—even ice cream, if you plan to work fast. If you’d rather put pens, paints, pencils or crayons to paper or canvas, that’s fine. too. The medium is up to you.

The object of this holiday is to have fun while exercising your creativity. How does Make Your Own Head Day fire your imagination?

While we’ve been unable to determine the origin of this holiday, we’re fairly sure it was dreamed up by a teacher. Make Your Own Head Day is popular in elementary school art classes, but it’s a great day for adults, too. We look at our faces every day in the mirror. What do we see? How will we translate it: is it realistic, trippy, round, flat, square? There’s no wrong answer. What could be better than that?

Fun fact: The weight of the average adult human head is about eight pounds. This butter sculpture carved of Minnesotan Dairy Princess Betty Holdvogt weighs fifty pounds and had been sitting in a freezer for four years before she hauled it across the country to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2007.
Make Your Own Head Day
Here are a few guidelines from Instructables to help you get the proportions right when sculpting your head:

1. The eyes are in the middle of the head. For real, the forehead and hair are the full top half. Fold a face in half and the eyes are right there on the crease.
2. If you fold that same face in quarters, the fold above the eyes is the hair line and the fold below is the bottom of the nose.
3. So now that you’re all into folding faces, fold it into thirds lengthwise. The eyes are in the middle of the two lines. The mouth stretches the middle third.
4. If you have two eyes (which most of us do), an imaginary third eye of the same size should fit between them.
5. Ears line up with the middle of the eye and the bottom of the nose.
6. In profile, the brow and chin line up, and the ears are in the middle of the head.

Or create your face in fondant using these handy directions:

What are you waiting for? Make your own head and share the results! We’d love to see what you’ve created! Have a happy and fun Make Your Own Head Day!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

November 26 is National Cake Day

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Today is National Cake Day. One of the most delicious things ever invented, cake has earned every one of the fifteen holidaysNational Cake Day dedicated to different variations. Whet your appetite with the story of how it all got started.

A Brief History of Cake

Cake dates back to ancient Egypt, where it was often flavored with nuts and honey. In Greece, it evolved into the pastry known as baklava. Ancient Romans added eggs and butter to honey-sweetened bread dough.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term cake back to the 13th century Old Norse word kaka. Fruitcakes and gingerbread baked in medieval Europe were dense and remained edible for several months.

Early English cakes were round, flat and hardened on both sides from being turned over during baking. Icing made of boiled sugar and egg whites was poured onto a finished cake, forming a hard glossy coating as it cooled.

Baking changed as oven reliability improved and ingredients such as refined sugar became widely available in the mid-17th century. By the mid-19th century, the use of refined white flour and baking powder instead of yeast created cake as we know it. Frostings using butter, cream and confectioner’s sugar began to replace boiled icings in the first few decades of the 20th century.

During the Great Depression, the need for easy, relatively inexpensive foods spurred the introduction of boxed cake mix. It was a hit with millions of housewives in the U.S. and soon caught on around the globe. Its popularity has endured ever since.

How to Celebrate Cake Day

That’s easy: eat some cake! Angel food, babka, Black Forest, bundt, carrot, cheesecake, chocolate, Devil’s Food, German chocolate, kugelhopf, layer, marble, panettone, Pear William, pound, red velvet, sacher torte, sponge cake, stollen, streusel, trés lêches, upside-down—the choice is up to you. Or have one of each: we’ll never tell!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

Tie One On Day

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Tie One On Day takes place every year on the day before Thanksgiving. But it has nothing to do with Drinksgiving or Blackout Wednesday and doesn’t promote alcohol use or abuse.

Tie One On DayIt began on  Thanksgiving eve in 2003, when EllynAnne Geisel wrapped a pie in an apron, slipped a handwritten note of sympathy into its pocket and delivered it to a neighbor who was going through a difficult time. Her gesture was met with warmth and gratitude. EllynAnne was inspired to share the joyful connection she felt by creating Tie One On Day.

It’s easy to participate. On Thanksgiving Eve,

EllynAnne has collected over 600 vintage aprons, written three books and created an award-winning apron exhibit that has been traveling around the country since 2004. (You can book it for $500 per week plus shipping.)

She also designs and sells aprons, including one that appeared in Vogue magazine. She has been interviewed on CBS News Sunday Morning and NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered. She spoke at 2015’s Southwest Conference on Language Teaching, sharing aprons as a teaching tool in her presentation entitled “Global Apron: How Tying One On…(an Apron, of Course!) Unifies Through Remembrance, Art and Language.”

Tie One On Day is recognized by Chase’s Calendar of Events, the bible of unofficial holidays. Join EllynAnne and “give from the heart on Wednesday–then give thanks on Thursday.” You might discover a cottage industry while you’re at it.

Happy Tie One On Day!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

November 19 is World Toilet Day

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world toilet dayWorld Toilet Day

World Toilet Day was established on November 19, 2001, by the World Toilet Organization to raise awareness of the global need for proper sanitation facilities. Since then, it has grown in scope and recognition. In 2013, the United Nations passed a resolution recognizing World Toilet Day as an official UN international day.

Each year, World Toilet Day has a different theme:

  • 2016’s observance centered on toilets and jobs, pointing out that disease transmission at work, primarily due to poor sanitation and hygiene practices, causes 17% of all workplace deaths. It represented several professions with a unique visual aid.

World Toilet Day

  • The focal points for 2015 were toilets and nutrition. Participants were urged to pose on their commodes like Rodin’s The Thinker, take selfies and post them on the World Toilet Day site. While we’re not sure how that relates to nutrition, we applaud the time-honored tradition of reducing this sculpture to a bathroom humor punchline. world toilet day 2015 thinker logo
  • The 2014 campaign emphasized equality and dignity. (In other words, no self-portraits straining on the john, thank you very much.)world toilet day
  • The slogan in 2012 was “I give a sh*t, do you?” Indonesian stars embraced it in this video.

Every year, World Toilet Day calls attention to the fact that more than 2.4 billion people–about one in three–don’t have access to a toilet. Over one billion must defecate in the open. To raise awareness of this harsh reality, a “see through loo” was set up at the September 2015 Global Citizen Festival in New York City.

What You Can Do:

  • Open your door and share your toilet. (The World Toilet Day site respectfully suggests you clean it first.)
  • Host a mass squat. “Stop, drop, squat and share!” Be advised that the World Toilet Organization will not post bail. Plan your plein-air dump locale accordingly.
  • Share informational tweets such as, “The world’s untreated poop would fill Cowboy Stadium in just two days.” (How can they know that? And why?)

No matter what you do today, doo today or number two today, take some time to celebrate World Toilet Day in your own way. Don’t forget to bring a magazine.

Happy World Toilet Day!

Related:
Global Handwashing Day (October 15)

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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