I'm breaking the pattern of Advent/Christmas/winter ties to recall the Boston Tea Party, on the night of 16 December 1773. I bought this tie showing a map of Old Boston seven years ago, from the gift shop associated with the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, where I also bought some "official" Boston Tea Party Blend Tea. (I am sure that these tea leaves were not actually part of the cargo that was dumped into Boston Harbor.)
We are midway through National Tie Month. Today it's exceptionally cold for central Kentucky, with morning temperatures in the single digits F. I'm quite sure my happy penguins are used to frigid land and air!
Today is also National Cupcake Day. The cupcake was originally known as the 1-2-3-4 cake because the recipe called for 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, 4 eggs, and also 1 cup of milk, and 1 spoonful of baking soda.
This is the Third Sunday in Advent 2025, and the traditional theme is JOY! So here's a very happy snowman, with tiny sparkling lights.
It's a rare Saturday when I choose to wear a tie for no good reason, but I'm taking the chance to observe the 13th day of National Tie Month with a tie featuring "postage-stamp snowmen." They are shown as built in Cairo (made of pyramids), 16th century England (decapitated), Honolulu (made of pineapples), Pisa (leaning over), Florida (a puddle), and New York City (covered with graffiti). We got about 4 inches of snow recently; it's melting today but there should be more tonight/tomorrow.
Today's tie helps celebrate National Poinsettia Day! It was created by Congress in 2002. The flower was introduced from Mexico into the United States around 1828 by diplomat Robert Poinsett (1779-1851). It soon became a popular decoration and was named in Poinsett's honor. I chose my shirt with an embroidered laptop because we are Zooming for our standard Friday morning doughnuts meeting.
We are gradually getting our house decorated for Christmas. Window candles, inside garland, the small tree for the "bears' window" and other things are in place. Next up -- the stockings on the stairway and then the main tree! The lights shown on this tie are like the ones my parents had, which were much hotter to touch than our LEDs.
Almost exactly one-third of our way through National Tie Month! Today's tie shows Santa skiing right through a reindeer game of football. Shelving those thoughts, here's a completely different subject: Many librarians celebrate 10 December as Dewey Decimal System Day, marking the birthday of Melvil Dewey (1851-1931).
Today (9 December) marks the 60th anniversary of the premiere of "A Charlie Brown Christmas"! My tie shows Charlie, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, Sally and Woodstock. In 2020 Apple bought the rights to all of the Peanuts television specials, and so they are now available for streaming only through the Apple+ subscription service. Today I ordered the DVD for us!
Another snowy day in December, making the snowpeople on my tie very happy!! I'm not building a snowman today but I will brave the cold (wind chills in the teens) to fill my 18 bird feeders -- mixed seed, safflower, sunflower and suet -- and to fill our heated bird bath.
For the Second Sunday in Advent, I'm showing some Christmas penguins who are singing very peacefully. The theme for this Sunday is "Peace." You can see some veryhappy (and mostly peaceful) penguins at this video, titled "Christmas Music Theme: Happy Feet." I can't tell if any of those penguins are singing.
Merry Christmas to us, and Happy St. Nicholas Day! In September we decided to give ourselves tickets to a concert by Andrea Bocelli and the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, tonight at (giant) Rupp Arena. My tie celebrates Santa on skis!
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Here's my International Santa, wishing you a very Merry Christmas! This tie was a gift in 2008 from my friend Beth Blanchard (who was then working at EKU, in the International Services office). She got the tie (which is labeled Made in Italy) while on a trip to the United Kingdom.
Note about 5 December: Today marks the birthday of physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), famous for the uncertainty principle. It expresses the law in subatomic science that the more precisely you measure the velocity (momentum) of a particle, the less precision you can have for its position at that moment. So, on a grander scale, we can know with great precision that Heisenberg was born on 5 December but we may not be able to know exactly where that occurred. Haha!
On the French Republican Calendar (used briefly from 1793 to 1805), the date we know as 4 December was named 14 Frimaire, "Sapin," to honor the fir tree. Each day in that calendar was named for a plant or crop, a farm tool, or a farm animal. My tie with many decorated trees has a secret button that chirps "Silent Night." Happy Fir Tree Day!
With nothing special to note for 3 December, I am choosing to celebrate peppermint candy, a holiday favorite for many people. A recipe for making striped peppermint candy was first published in 1844. The red-and-white twisted canes became popular in the early 1900s, and soon showed up as a traditional Christmas decoration.
Our central Kentucky December weather kicks off with a winter storm watch and overnight snow. We didn't get enough to build a snowman but the ones on my tie are happy anyway.
