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November 29 is Square Dance Day

Today is Square Dance Day. Some of us remember awkward co-ed square dance lessons in the high school gym. Or maybe we watched a group do-si-do on a parade float down Main Street. How can we keep the memory alive of an American folk dance and its European roots? We’re glad you asked.

Square Dance Day
In 17th-century England, teams of six–all men, for propriety’s sake–began performing what was called the morris dance. The fad inspired a country dance in which couples lined up on village greens to practice weaving, circling and swinging moves reminiscent of modern-day square dancing.

French couples in the 18th century squared off for dances such as the cotillion and quadrille. Folk dances in Scotland, Scandinavia and Spain are also thought to have influenced square dancing.

Europeans brought these dances with them when they settled the North American colonies. French styles became popular after the American Revolutionary War when many newly-minted citizens disdained British traditions. Several square dancing terms have their origins in the French language, including “promenade,” “allemande” and “do-si-do”—a corruption of “dos-à-dos,” meaning “back-to-back.”

square dance day
A similar style called the “running set” caught on in 19th-century Appalachia. At first, participants memorized all the steps but soon the dances became so complicated that it became necessary to have someone call out cues.  This caller’s original function was to call out the steps in time to fiddle music, so dancers wouldn’t have to memorize them all.

As square dance calling became an art form in its own right, the best ones invented lines to say between cues such as “Don’t be bashful and don’t be afraid. Swing on the corner in a waltz promenade.” A caller might also come up with new dance steps and routines.

Waltzes and polkas, which allowed couples to get closer to each other without raising too many eyebrows, supplanted group-based dances by the late 19th century. As the jazz and swing eras dawned, square dancing came to seem even more outdated.

In the 1920s, automaker Henry Ford decided to revive the tradition as a form of exercise and, more important, as instruction in proper manners with the opposite sex. He paid for the development of a national program, opened ballrooms, made attendance mandatory for his factory workers, and produced instructive radio broadcasts for schools throughout the country.

Lloyd Shaw, a folk dance teacher in the 1930s, wrote books about the rescued art of square dancing and held seminars for a new generation of callers. In the 1950s, standards were developed for square dancing across the United States, allowing dancers to learn interchangeable routines and patterns.

Square Dance Day

Recordings made the square dance more accessible since a trained caller no longer had to be physically present. Anyone in the country could dance to Ernest Legg of West Virginia’s calling on 78:

Ladies do and the gents you know,
It’s right by right by wrong you go,
And you can’t go to heaven while you carry on so,
And it’s home little gal and do-si-do,
And it may be the last time, I don’t know,
And oh by gosh and oh by Joe.

Square dancing continues to thrive in some areas although its overall popularity has waned in recent decades, according to the United Square Dancers of America. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennesse and Virginia have all seen fit to make the square dance their ‘folk dance’ State Symbol.

Want to know more? Let Bugs Bunny call the tune:

Happy Square Dance Day!

Sources:
History.com – Square Dancing: A Swinging History
Appalachian History –  And it’s home little gal and do-si-do

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

Make Your Own Head Day

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

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

November 7 is National Notary Public Day

Today is Notary Public Day, created in 1975 to “recognize notaries for their public service and their contributions to national and international commerce.” Today’s date was selected because the first American notary public, Thomas Fugill, was appointed on November 7, 1639, by the Colony of New Haven.
notary public day

Today, nearly 4.8 million notaries public in the United States carry on the tradition of service. Let’s take a look at a few of these trusted public officials who’ve witnessed American history.

New World
When Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain sent a notary to keep track of any treasure that might be picked up by the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. When Columbus landed in the New World on October 12, 1492, notary Rodrigo de Escobedo was there to document the momentous event.

American Revolution
Thomas McKean served as Delaware’s delegate to the Continental Congress and voted to support the colonies’ bid for independence from England. He also was a notary and the last person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Nathaniel Gorham, a Massachusetts notary and businessman, served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and his signature appears alongside those of John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton and others on that historical document.

19th Century Notaries
Charles Bellinger Tate Stewart became a notary in 1841 and served in the fledgling Republic of Texas government when it declared independence from Mexico. He also designed the iconic Lone Star flag.

Another Texas notary well-known in Western folklore was the eccentric Judge Roy Bean, who founded the town of Langtry in 1882 and was notorious for holding court in a saloon he owned. He called himself the “Law West of the Pecos” and offered notary services along with ice-cold beer.

national notary public roy bean

In 1864, author Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was appointed a notary public in Virginia City, Nevada by his brother, acting Nevada governor Orion Clemens. He resigned a few months later and left for California. Clemens later claimed he’d left town to avoid legal trouble after challenging a local man to a duel following their argument over one of Clemens’ newspaper articles.

The Civil War
The American Civil War ended in 1865 when Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate forces, surrenders at Appomattox. Lee took an amnesty oath, swearing to remain loyal to the United States and abide by its laws. C.A. Davidson, a West Virginia notary,  witnessed and certified Lee’s oath.

The document was misplaced and Lee never received a pardon or regained his citizenship. In 1975, Lee’s citizenship was posthumously restored by Congress, following the discovery of the notarized oath in State Department records.

Swearing in the President
When President Warren Harding died in 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge was staying with family in Vermont. Upon receiving word of Harding’s death, Coolidge took the oath of office before the nearest qualified official, his father (and notary) John.

21st Century Notaries
Many modern-day celebrities have served as notaries. Humorist writer Dave Barry became a Florida notary in 1994 to officiate a friend’s wedding. Actor Stanley Tucci and singer Jennifer Lopez also have served as notaries.

If you’d like to join them, learn how to become a notary in your state. And don’t forget to thank a notary public today.

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays