Weird Holidays - January Version
- Bengisu İlay ÖZKURT
- 12 Oca 2021
- 7 dakikada okunur
People all around the world have some holidays like: Christmas, New Year, Tanabata … etc. But there are some weird days that I’m sure you’ve never heard of before. Holidays that a lot of people don’t even now they exist. But today I’m here to tell you about 6 of those weird holidays from January that you can celebrate or use as an excuse if you don’t want to do your homework. So let’s get started, shall we?
1) Learn Your Name in Morse Code Day (11th of January)
A lot of people have probably thought of learning the Morse code before. I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing to communicate with your friends without even talking and anyone noticing, of course if anyone in the room knew Morse code it might have ended up bad so you have to be careful in what you code. Well, this day is a great opportunity to start learning the Morse code that you’ve been wanting to learn for who knows how long.
“Learn Your Name in Morse Code” day was created by Brownielocks to make people remember about Morse code. From 2007 on knowing Morse code is not a requirement to get a ham radio license. Since then people pay less attention to Morse code day by day. The day was created to get people to take an interest in Morse code. The reason this day was chosen is because the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph, which uses Morse code, was done on January 11, 1838, by inventors Samuel Breese Morse and Alfred Vail.
If you ask about how to celebrate this holiday is of course by learning Morse code, or at least your name in Morse. If you don’t have any time at all or don’t have any interest in learning Morse code you can just try learning more about Morse code and the role it played in society.
2) Nothing Day (16th of January)
You know the feeling, when you don’t want to do anything at all the whole day? You just want to stay in bed, do no homework or no studying. Just watching your favorite show and relaxing the whole day. I bet every one of you have experienced this feeling at least once. At first this day sounds like the perfect day to do it but if you look deeper in it you’ll see that there is a lot more to it…
Nothing Day is an "un-event" proposed in 1972 by Teacher Jothy Narayanasamy and observed annually on January 16 since 1973, when it was added to Chase’s Calender of Events is not actually a public holiday, as that requires an act of Congress. Its purpose is to provide people a day they can just celebrating nothing. It is sponsored by Harold Coffin’s National Nothing Foundation, registered in Capitola, California.
Celebrating this day may be harder than it seems because doing absolutely nothing is a real philosophical challenge. If you just watch your favorite show the whole day does it count as doing nothing? No, because you are watching something. What about sitting in silence for the day? Is that doing nothing? Well, it all depends on which philosopher you ask. If you’re still thinking, you’re probably not doing nothing. But it’s probably okay to just relax and don’t work at all, and maybe you can do some research about notion of nothingness features in philosophy and science. But no matter what you do this is still an amazing opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted to not do any homework.
3)Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day (17th of January)
Did you make a resolution this year? Even if you didn’t, you must know this New Year tradition of resolutions. And if you didn’t, you can try making one next year. We even have a post about that in our site by Efe GÜLLER. Making a New Year’s resolution is fun to do but everybody knows that you’re not going to stay true to those resolutions after all. You start with an enthusiasm but there are really few people who can stick with their resolutions. Everyone was so sure about resolutions not lasting long that there is a whole day for to ditch it.
History of Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day is unknown. Nobody knows from which year this day stated to be celebrated and who came up with this idea. But it’s assumed that this day is as old as New Year’s resolutions itself. The reason this day was chosen as Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day did not get lost in history though. Seems like 17th of January is usually the day that “new year, new me” persons give up on their resolutions. So this day was chosen as the one.
I think what you should do to celebrate this day is crystal clear: Ditch your New Year’s resolution! They’re not going to last long anyway. Instead of these ridiculous resolutions that you aren’t even going to stick with, you can make a resolution that depends on a good and meaningful reason instead of a magically appearing determination that comes with New Year. And some of these resolutions are something that you shouldn’t be doing to yourself like “never falling in love again” nobody should do this to him/herself. Shortly just ditch your resolution for the better.
4) Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day (22nd of January)
Cats are sure curious creatures. They try to understand everything they find interesting or weird, and while doing that they make a big fuss. But this is in cats’ nature, to investigate, wanting to understand… Usually this is adorable, sometimes it can end up with a broken glass or vase but it doesn’t really matter after they look at us with that cute face. So today why don’t we spare some time to answer some of our curious friends’ questions before curiosity kills them.
From which year this holiday was started to celebrate is, again, unknown. But we know who created it. They are Thomas and Ruth Roy from Wellcat.com. This day aims for us to understand cats better. For cat owners to spend more time with their little adorable curious creature, and your little creature gets to find some answers to their questions.
To celebrate this day of course you should spend more time with your cat. Since you can’t actually talk to the cat, all you can do is to play with them and try to make them understand what really it is that bothers them. This day is also a great chance to convince your parents to get a cat, if you wanted to get a cat, like me, you can take your chance and give it a try. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to convince them with a reasonable explanation.
5) Opposite Day (25th of January)
“Goodbye no one, yesterday you’re not talking about identical night.” If you were able to understand that sentence you are born ready for this day. But if you were not able to, it’s okay because I think nobody actually takes it this far, you will still be able to survive through the day. Here is the translation for who didn’t understand: “Hello everyone, today I’m talking about, opposite day.” and if you are celebrating the opposite day you better tell it to people you’re going to talk in the day or they might think you think as you say, when you actually think the opposite.
How did opposite day came to be or got this popular is unknown, but it has been considered a “children’s philosophy course” for a long time. And it also has warmed its way into our jokester hearts by creating a self paradox. If it’s the opposite day, opposite of opposite day is a not opposite day, so what do we do that? It’s probably best to ignore this little paradox and just keep going with oppositeness.
How to celebrate is quite clear, to say and act opposite to our normal behavior but if you want to do more than that there are some series and movies about the opposite day for example: Opposite Day, Sponge Bob’s Opposite Day episode… I think I’m not finished about opposite day. Forget to tell your friends you’re not celebrating opposite day, or something bad won’t happen. Don’t enjoy this holiday.
6) Backwards Day (31st of January)
.yarooh, yaD sdrawkcaB eht si yadoT It is really hard to speak backwards isn’t it? Imagine doing this for a whole day. It almost sounds impossible, but today even if it will be so hard to do, giving it a try on behalf of this day doesn’t sound so bad after all. Backwards Day sounds a little like Opposite Day I just talked about but there are major differences between them. In Opposite Day you change the meaning of what you mean in the exact opposite of it, but in Backwards Day you flip it backward like I did in the beginning.
Sarah Nicole Miller and Megan Emily Scott created this day. One day they were thinking about making arts and crafts while milking the cows in the Miller family farm, when the idea came to their mind. They decided on the rules and created the day. The idea was heard and on the very next year’s 31st January first Backwards Day was celebrated. Two women were walking down the street when they saw everybody doing things backwards.
To celebrate Backwards Day of course as I said, you can talk backwards for the rest of the day but that’s not the only way to celebrate it. You can also write backwards and wear your clothes backwards. You can read a book starting from the last page but if it’s a book you haven’t read yet, be ready to take the risks. You can do the same with a movie, but again, you are warned. You can eat dinner in breakfast and breakfast in dinner as well. In short, you have a lot of ways to celebrate it, go and try I’m sure it will be fun.
I am finished for today, thank you for reading and I’ll be back with the February version in the next month so stay tuned~
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