Presidents' Day
Presidents' Day
Presidents’ Day is on February 20th. It's a day when we honor all U.S. presidents in U.S. history. This day was originally going to be a holiday all about honoring the first president George Washington. Abraham Lincoln was added later on, but now it is a day to commemorate all U.S. presidents. During the 1960s, there were debates if Presidents’ Day should be about George Washington’s birthday or Abraham Lincoln's birthday. It was made so that we can look back at all U.S. presidents to see where we are now and honor them. Congress couldn't change the name, so people just started to call the day Presidents’ Day. The date when Presidents’ Day is celebrated also got changed, so that it wouldn't be about a specific U.S. president and can be about all U.S. presidents. Each year on Presidents’ Day, the current president of the U.S. would make a speech about honoring the past presidents and looking back on the past to now. There are other ways people celebrate Presidents’ Day like writing a letter to the U.S. president thanking them for what they've done or expressing what they could improve on and they might get a call back! There are also Presidents’ Day parades you can attend that are meant to honor all U.S. presidents with music, marching, and more. Presidents’ Day is about honoring all U.S. presidents past and present!
-Anonymous 802
World Cancer Day
World Cancer Day
Observed on February 4th, World Cancer Day is an international day to raise awareness of cancer, and to encourage its prevention, treatment, and detection. Its main goal is to remarkably reduce illness and death caused by cancer. It is also an opportunity to reassemble the international community to put an end to the justice of preventable suffering from cancer. Multiple capabilities are run on World Cancer Day to show support to the ones who are affected by cancer. World Cancer Day is led by the UICC, Union for International Cancer Control, to support the targets of the World Cancer Declaration, written in 2008. UICC still continues to expand in its impact and its success and commitment to ensuring the fame of World Cancer Day.
What is "Groundhog Day"?
What is Groundhog Day? It's a holiday commonly celebrated in the U.S. and Canada on February 2nd. It comes from Pennsylvania Dutch Superstition that if the groundhog emerges from its burrow, the shadow can determine if spring will come early or will come within a few more weeks. This holiday remains popular even though studies have found that the groundhog and its shadow don’t determine the arrival of springtime.
It all started on February 2nd by Dutch/German Settlers which so happens to be called “Badger Day” or “Dachstag” which is basically modern Groundhog Day. Yup, it was once a badger instead of a groundhog. There were multiple instances of the holiday where the lore had to be changed such as before the badger, there it was a bear. The earliest mention of this holiday was in 1840 in Pennsylvania Dutch County, and the first reported news on the holiday was in 1886 by the newspaper of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
Clymer Freas was the editor of the newspaper at the time and was coined as the “father” who conceived the idea of Groundhog Day; these events were made possible from the Punxsutawney Elk Lode. The city of Punxsutawney was the city where all Groundhog traditions and events came from where the holiday began to spread to other parts of America and into Canada.
Certain practices of the holiday had been canceled such as the Groundhog hunt; Punxsutawney Elk Lodge started thinking of the groundhog as a game animal for food, and so the lodge started serving the hog as food and organizing a party every year dedicated to hunting down groundhogs. The groundhog club was created in 1899 which continued the hunt, which became an increasingly ritualized formality because the procurement of meat had to occur ahead of time for marinating. “Groundhog Punch”, which people called it, was said to taste like a combination of chicken and pork. The feast and the hunt didn’t catch on with the rest of the public and were soon discontinued. The Punxsutawney Groundhog didn’t have a name until 1961 when it was named Phil.
Today the small Dutch town has been seeing large crowds of people coming to see the groundhog emerge and for the past couple of years they’ve been live-streaming the event, bringing more people in to watch the groundhog. This year, the groundhog’s shadow predicted 6 more weeks of winter.
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