Happy Thanksgiving, Blog Readers!

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that I’m sure all of you avidly celebrate, but few probably know what it’s actually about. Giving thanks, right? Well, sure—of course it is—but thanks for what? Turkey and the Macy’s Parade, right? Well, no…not exactly. See, taking a day to give thanks way back when used to be a much broader tradition.

I’m sure you all know about the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock and learned the ways of the Native Americans to celebrate in the harvest feast with them. What you probably don’t know is that thanksgiving days were already a tradition celebrated by the Pilgrims before they landed in the New World.

Days of thanksgiving were once held rather frequently throughout the year, actually. What was a European custom became an American custom for years to make a day of thanks. What were they thankful for? Anything. It could have been a crop that came in really well that year, the end of a drought, or simply making it through a harsh winter.

When the Pilgrims first came to the New World, their harvest feast with the Natives just became one more reason for being thankful. Thanksgiving Day would not become an annually celebrated national holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it in 1863.

One name that we should all remember on Thanksgiving is Sarah Josepha Hale, an American writer and editor (as well as the writer of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). For 20 years, Sarah campaigned for our national holiday that we all know and love. She was 75 by the time she finally convinced Lincoln by mail that this would be a good holiday to help unify the country after the Civil War.

Thanks to her, we celebrate with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie (all her idea). The “first” Thanksgiving Day celebrated by the Pilgrims and Natives served a fairly different menu consisting of deer, various types of fowl (like turkey and duck), fish (like cod and bass), and flint corn. Like I said—thanks, Sarah!

From all of us at Everything Summer Camp, Happy Thanksgiving!

Shalom, Boys and Girls, and Happy Hanukkah!

Once again, it’s time to get out the dreidels and menorahs! Starting tomorrow night at sunset, the first night of Hanukkah begins! Eight days and nights follow to observe this traditional Hebrew holiday until nightfall on December 5. Because of the time of season it falls on, Hanukkah is sometimes considered a sort of Jewish Christmas, but what exactly is this celebration about? Let’s take a deeper look.

First of all, as opposed to Christmas (which is a steady Dec. 25), Hanukkah goes off of a lunisolar calendar which is based on the sun and the moon while the traditional Gregorian calendar only considers the sun and the time it takes the earth to move around it. Hanukkah consistently begins on the 25 of Kislev, a month of the Hebrew calendar.

The history of Hanukkah goes back to 165 B.C. when a Jewish rebel army known as the Maccabees defeated the Syrians and rededicated their holy temple in Jerusalem. The eight days of Hanukkah are about a seven-day miracle in which the Maccabees only had enough oil to light the temple’s eternal flame for a single day, yet the lamp kept on burning for eight!

Onto Hanukkah’s main tradition, the lighting of a distinctive, nine-branched candleholder which is often times referred to as a menorah (like in the second sentence of this post). Not everyone knows that this name is actually incorrect for the traditional nine-branched candelabrum. It’s actually called a Hanukkiah. A menorah, on the other hand, has only seven candleholders—like the lamp that was used in the ancient holy temple in Jerusalem.

Hanukkiahs have nine candleholders so that there’s a candle for every night of Hanukkah and then one more to light the others. If you celebrate Hanukkah, you now can educate your friends and family on the holiday you’re about to celebrate! Happy Hanukkah.

Bonjour, Blog Buddies!

(That’s French for “hello”). As you may have already known, World Hello Day is today. World Hello Day is a celebration that takes place all over the world in which everyone celebrates simply by greeting everyone they know with “Nyob Zoo” (if your Hmong), “Hei” (for Norwegians), “Hallo” (in Germany), and, of course, our American standard, “Hello.” If you spoke Japanese you would say, “こんにちは.”

How many different ways can someone say “hello”?

Well, that’s actually a pretty tricky question. It’s hard to know how many languages actually even exist in the world, there are so many. Sometimes it’s difficult just trying to distinguish between different dialects of the same language; however, people have estimated that there are somewhere close to 7000 languages in the world today!

That means that there are 7000 different ways to say “hello” to one another. It’s a bit of a difficult concept to wrap the brain around—just think—it’s pretty safe to say that there are more words that mean “hello” in all the languages of the world than there are words that you might speak today! Now that is absolutely crazy! It’s pretty much unfathomable.

So what do you do to celebrate World Hello Day? Well, it’s pretty simple. Say “hello” to everyone you see. Say it to your mom, your dad, your siblings, your dog, your friends, to strangers, say it to your camp trunk from Everything Summer Camp if you want! No “hello” is too eccentric on World Hello Day.

The idea behind World Hello Day is to get a message to world leaders. The message: to use communication over force when taking care of conflicts. The world has been celebrating Hello Day since 1973 and its popularity has only gone up over the years.

So, for the first time, I’ll end today’s post by saying, Hello!

Hey, Shoppers!

Thanksgiving is right around the corner which means that Black Friday is waiting right around the corner too. I’m sure that lots of you will have already looked over the Black Friday ads for your favorite stores before you sit down to your Thanksgiving feasts. And I’m sure that as you’re stuffing your face with turkey and mashed potatoes, you’ll hardly be able to stand the wait of embarking on your strategized night of shopping.

But did you know that back when Black Friday was just in its youthful days, stores didn’t want their ads leaked? It made the competition fight back with some aggression. As the times changed, however, and stores began to realize just how excited people were about Black Friday sales, they began to want their ads “leaked” so that shoppers would have some time to map out their Black Friday shopping strategies.

Nowadays—let’s face it—no advertisements are actually being “leaked” anymore. Don’t doubt it for a second that major corporations (or even smaller retailers) know how to keep a secret! From Black Friday ads to company mergers, it’s nothing new for a company to have to keep a tight lid on certain events. They can keep something to themselves when they want.

I think that at this point, we all realize it’s no marketing scandal and that stores are purposefully “leaking” their ads to the public. Nowadays this more-than-obligatory move isn’t really something to be ashamed of so much as it’s necessary to keep up with all the other stores.

With no one being fooled anymore, why don’t stores just come right out and disclose their ads for Black Friday sales without having to go through their typical “how-did-this-happen” attitude?

I know the marketing department at Everything Summer Camp would never involve itself in such monkey business, participating in such tomfoolery as leaking our own Black Friday ad.

Hey, Pickle People!

There’s no question about it. Pickles are an all-American treat! It’s a favorite condiment for hamburger fixings—one of the most American foods in the country.

While pickles can be incredibly complementary, sometimes there’s just nothing else that will satisfy your taste buds save a big, salty pickle completely on its own, packed with explosive pickle juice. If I close my eyes and think about it, I can almost taste that bursting bite into a perfect pickle right now. YUM!

So, I’m sure you’re all asking yourselves, why am I talking about pickles? But the question should really be why aren’t YOU talking about pickles? After all, today is National Pickle Day and pickles deserve all the praise that they receive. Not enough people are aware of today’s significance. However, for a holiday that was created only six years ago in 2007, its popularity has grown immensely. People care about pickles.

I’m sure that most of you already know pickles started out as nothing more than cucumbers. The cucumbers were then pickled. Pickling a vegetable is simply preserving it in brine or marinating it in vinegar. Pretty much any vegetable can be pickled—it doesn’t really even need to be a vegetable. Popular foods for pickling, besides cucumbers of course, are okra, onions, peppers, olives, cabbage, eggs, herring, sausage, pigs feet—the list goes on.

So how did this nationally delicious holiday get started? Pretty much because it didn’t exist even though it ought to. The date was picked arbitrarily (though it was set for the very near future when it was first pickled out—er, picked out, I mean—so that the wait for National Pickle Day wouldn’t be too long—who would want to wait to celebrate after having such a delicious idea).

If you love pickles and you love National Pickle Day (and why wouldn’t you?) then get out there and spread the word about it. After all, you need friends around to make it a celebration! As the slogan of National Pickle Day goes, “Eat a pickle, Hug a friend.”