Hey, Kiddies!

Today is Tooth Fairy Day. Has there been some awkward wiggling and dangling going on inside your mouth lately? Sounds like you’ve got a visit from the Tooth Fairy coming up. Get ready for a little extra coin in exchange for your tooth once it finally comes loose. That’s how it works: you take your tooth and place it under your pillow; that night, the Tooth Fairy comes and pockets the tooth while leaving you a little something for your troubles.

It hasn’t always been this way, though. The tale of the Tooth Fairy and the traditions associated with children losing their teeth have gone through some changes throughout the years and the cultures that celebrated them. Here are a few different things people would do:

Bury Teeth
Europeans in the 1400s were in the habit of burying children’s baby teeth when they fell out. It’s quite possible that this is what led to placing teeth under the pillow. And when a kid’s sixth tooth came out, it was customary for parents to slip a small gift in place of the tooth where it had been buried as a sort of ‘tooth fee’.

Burn Teeth
While the customs of burying teeth bear a similar resemblance to today’s customs, this one is completely unlike anything we do today. Kids, however, in England during the middle ages were instructed to burn their teeth to avoid hardship and suffering in the afterlife. I, however, on behalf of the Everything Summer Camp Blog do not recommend this.

Wear Teeth
Possibly where the concept for a ‘tooth fee’ came from, the Vikings of Norse culture thought children’s teeth to have good luck tied to them and would pay children for their loose teeth. Some warriors would wear the teeth they purchased for protection in battle.

Who knows where all these traditions and notions came from, but in any case, the tradition lives on as losing baby teeth is a rite of passage worth celebration. If baby teeth are so lucky, though, maybe you should hold onto those little gems! What does the Tooth Fairy need them for anyway? As always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Hectic High Fliers!

Summer is a demanding season. There’s so much that we want to fit in that we run ourselves ragged in our attempt and may forget to actually enjoy any of it. After all, too much of a good thing quickly transforms into a bad thing. Take today for a great lesson in making yourself take a break—especially those of you who are always moving and always occupying your minds. It’s Relaxation Day and, believe it or not, it can feel like hard work to actually allow yourself to relax—especially when we’re prone to constantly exercising our bodies and our brains. Often times, we choose to simply stay in the mode of motion as opposed to switching gears and giving ourselves a break.

Even when we consider ourselves to be relaxing, we’re usually still being active in some way or another (reading a book, watching TV, playing video games, talking on the phone, and surfing the Internet all demand a good amount of work from your brain, despite how relaxed your body may be through the duration of these activities. No matter how relaxing they may seem, they’re still ACTIVities nonetheless).

Of course, we give our bodies and minds a break every night when we go to bed, but we need that time for recuperating from the day—it’s a deeper kind of rest. Wakeful relaxation is important too. Allow your mind’s rampant activity to dissolve, focusing on just one thing. Creating visual art can be a means of therapeutic relaxation, but even this can become too active.

Really try giving yourself a break today. Take a relaxing bath, sit in a comfy chair, or go lay in the grass and try not to let your mind wander too much. Just focus on enjoying the moment without any demands or problems to contemplate. It’s not always so easy, but it’s incredibly refreshing when you can make it happen. Go ahead—REALLY relax today and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Lighthouse Lovers!

Not only picturesque buildings, but symbols of hope, lighthouses are beautiful towers designed to emit light great distances with the purpose of helping pilots at sea navigate their ships through dangerous waters in the blanket of night. With radio, GPS, and other means of modern communication, lighthouses are now more-or-less poetic relics of our technology preceding the digital age, but still they stand like gentle giants peering out to the distant horizon.

Today we celebrate Lighthouse Day. Trips to visit a local lighthouse are a popular family activity in the summertime—not to mention a great way to observe Lighthouse Day! I recall a handful of trips my family made to check out lighthouses in our surrounding area. It was an awesome experience each time.

To celebrate on the Blog today, let’s explore the past for a little history lesson on lighthouses. As is the case with many things, the history of the lighthouse goes back farther than you likely expect. The very first lighthouse was built around 280 B.C. in ancient Egypt. An enormous bonfire was lit each night at the very top of the tower which stood taller than 450 feet! The beacon was visible from over 30 miles away!

This Egyptian Lighthouse was so big that it was included as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was toppled by an earthquake in 1303 A.D.

Since ancient times, people have experimented with the materials to use in lighthouse construction. Early American lighthouses were short for towers and made out of wood or stone. The bulk of the towers built before 1800 have either fallen or caught fire. It was understood that lighthouses would have to be made sturdier and the 17th Century started building tall towers like they had in ancient times.

Gentle giants of the coast, they were made of brick and cut stone. It became customary for a lighthouse to include living quarters for the keeper of a lighthouse—after all, somebody had to be there day after day to light the lantern and perform all the general maintenance duties to keep the lighthouse in operation!

Eventually, lighthouse towers were constructed from iron and concrete and automated signals have done away with the need for a keeper or those quiet days they used to live along the shore.

Lots of lighthouses still remain in operation as the only tangible and reliable means of navigation—whereas radio or GPS signals can be lost—but a growing number of towers are being decommissioned and their lights are going out.

Lack of funds has led to lack of maintenance and lighthouse structures have been left to weather the elements without the help of human hands. Rough weather over time has already toppled abandoned lighthouses and these towers will continue to fall as time wears on their neglected foundations.

In short, lighthouses will certainly span your lifetime, but they won’t be around forever. Appreciate the opportunity to explore these interesting towers of our history and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Chocolate Aficionados!

Today is National Milk Chocolate Day. Everybody and their mothers like the taste of chocolate (unless you’re just some kind of weirdo—no offense)! Responsible for such heavenly treats like chocolate frosting, chocolate bars, chocolate candy, hot chocolate, and much more, milk chocolate has transformed the world of chocolate forever!It accounts for more than 85% of the chocolate that gets eaten in the United States. While dark chocolate is a less altered dessert, milk chocolate, on the other hand, is made of a mixture using cocoa solids along with dry or condensed milk. There are folks out there who enjoy a bar of dark chocolate (yours truly being one of them), but most people indulge in the milkier treat.

People didn’t start eating chocolate until we noticed our less-evolved predecessors doing it. That’s right! We saw monkeys eating the white pulp within the cocoa pods and…well—monkey see, monkey do! And we’ve been hooked from our first taste! But our first taste was nothing like the typical Hershey’s bar that most people think of when they think of chocolate.

No, the first tastes of chocolate were bitter-sweet and probably wouldn’t be very tasty in today’s sugar-obsessed opinion. But something about its intoxicating richness held our taste buds spellbound for nearly 4000 years until, in 1875, a confectioner named Daniel Peter mastered a recipe eight years in the making that resulted in milk chocolate.

Bringing an unprecedented level of sweetness to this once bitter treat, Mr. Daniel Peter created a treat that’s dominated the dessert world for almost 150 years! The many health benefits of chocolate dissipate when undergoing the process to make milk chocolate, but it’s still proven to make us feel better.

In fact, you don’t even have to eat it. Science says that even just the smell of chocolate increases specific brainwaves which are known to trigger relaxation. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more relaxed already! Enjoy a milk chocolate treat for your relaxation as well as enjoyment today and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Frank Fans!

Tomorrow is National Hot Dog Day. Standing tall alongside hamburgers, hot dogs are one of the most iconic of fun, summertime foods. From the privacy of your own backyard to the crowded stadium park at the ol’ ballgame—hot dogs are enjoyable everywhere! Wieners, Franks, Foot Longs, Dogs—no matter what you call them, they’re delicious! But they sure have collected a lot of names throughout the years.

Pork sausages (the hotdogs’ predecessor) were first made in Frankfurt, Germany which is what led to the name Frankfurters and, of course, ‘Franks’ for short. Foot Longs are pretty self explanatory and ‘Wiener’, in German, translates to ‘little sausage’. So how did the incredibly common name of Hot Dogs come about?

Well, as it does today, sausage came in all different shapes. The thin, long ones were noted for their likeness to the shape of dachshund dogs and so they adopted the name dachshund sausages for a very long time. Following the rise of Frankfurter popularity in the United States around the 1850s, butchers from Germany found a new home in America and introduced these dachshund dogs. They were a big hit for street vendors as well as a fan favorite at baseball games. Our story takes place at a New York baseball game in 1901. Introducing a sports cartoonist named Tad Dorgan who, from his press box seats, overheard the vendors yelling out to the crowd, ‘Get your hot dachshund sausages here!’

Tad went home that night with the idea to depict the scene of the vendors among the crowd. He drew up the scene, but when he was writing the vendor’s word bubble, he realized he had no idea how to spell ‘dachshund’, so he just wrote ‘hot dogs’ down and coined the term overnight! Unfortunately the comic has never resurfaced.

Get prepared to celebrate Hot Dog Day tomorrow with hot dog bars so you can make your dogs up Chicago style, bacon-wrapped with blue cheese, with chili, or anything else you can think of. Happy Hot Dog Day and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John