Happy Holidays! From DeLena Ciamacco & The Ciamacco Team

 

7 Inspiring Ways to Decorate Your Front Porch for the Holidays | Presented by DeLena Ciamacco

 

Fun Facts About... Thanksgiving!

 

FUN FACTS ABOUT…

THANKSGIVING!

Presented to you by DeLena Ciamacco

This year, Thanksgiving will be a little different than ever before but the Facts & “history” of Thanksgiving will never change.

We are sure you've heard stories on the history of Thanksgiving a million times, and will probably hear even more this week. Well then, allow us to enlighten you with some strange and funny facts about the famous holiday that you might not have heard before.

The Meaning of Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving is celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Americans commonly trace the Thanksgiving holiday to a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English during his enslavement in England). Additionally the Wampanoag leader Massasoit had donated food stores to the fledgling colony during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient. The Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest, in 1621. It included 50 Pilgrims (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans who were invited as guests.

•  The original Thanksgiving included a menu featuring swans, seal, lobster, and deer. Cakes and pies were not a part of the meal as the pilgrim’s sugar supply had dwindled during the year and they possessed no ovens. There were also no forks at the first Thanksgiving; they were not popularized until the 18^th century.

• Squanto, the Pawtuxet Indian responsible for teaching the pilgrims how to farm, fish, and avoid poisonous plants was fluent in English after being captured by an English sea captain, sold into slavery, and escaping to London before returning to the new world on an exploratory trip.

•  The first state to officially adopt the holiday was New York in 1817.

• Sarah Joseph Hale, the woman responsible for the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday before Abraham Lincoln heeded her request in 1863.

• The official date set by Lincoln for the Thanksgiving holiday was the last Thursday in November, until Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it up a week in 1939 to spur spending for the Christmas holiday during the height of the Depression.  
  

• Thanksgiving Day Parade - Brent Connelly from Pixabay

  
  The first Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in 1924, and used real animals borrowed from Central Park Zoo. The Goodyear Company would make the first helium balloon for the parade in 1927, officially replacing the animals. Balloon handlers used to release the balloons at the end of the parade with the promise of rewards for whoever found them once they touched down. Today the parade attracts millions of spectators along the parade route each year.

• Thanksgiving is celebrated annually by the United States, Canada, Liberia, Puerto Rico, and Norfolk Island. Canadians even refer to our Thanksgiving as “Yanksgiving” in order to differentiate them (theirs is held the second Monday in October.)

• 
  The best way to test if your cranberries are ripe? Bounce them on the ground; if they bounce higher than 4 inches, they’re ready to be made into sauce. Cranberries are only one of three fruits that are originally native to the United States.

•  Frozen T.V. dinners were created in 1953 in an effort to get rid of 260 tons of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving that manufacturers still had not sold.

• 
  In 2007, Americans consumed 690 million pounds of turkey for Thanksgiving according to the National Turkey Association. That is roughly equal to the weight of the entire population of Singapore.

• The tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1934, after the creation of the Detroit Lions, who were formerly the Portsmouth Spartans. To generate interest and attention for the new team, their owner set up a game for Thanksgiving Day against the defending world champs, the Chicago Bears. The tradition stuck from there.  

• Green bean casserole, a staple at most Thanksgiving meals is only 62 years old. Campbell’s Soup created the recipe in 1955 in an effort to generate sales for their cream of mushroom soup.

• The night before Thanksgiving is the single biggest sales day at bars across the United States, beating out St. Patrick’s Day for the title. The theory is that thousands of people descend on their old home towns where they meet up with old friends and head to the bars to catch up and celebrate. This time also marks the release of most brewing companies Christmas and Holiday ales.  

•  Minnesota is the biggest turkey producing state in the country, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana. These six states account for 2 in 3 turkeys sold during Thanksgiving.
  
  
  

·        President George H.W. Bush pardoned the first turkey in 1989, and it's a tradition that persists today. But what happens to the lucky bird that doesn't get served with a side of mashed potatoes? In 2005 and 2009, the turkeys were sent to Disneyland and Walt Disney World parks to serve as grand marshal in their annual Thanksgiving parades. And from 2010 to 2013, they vacationed at Washington's Mount Vernon state. Not bad!

 

WE ALL HOPE YOU HAVE…
A Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't Forget to Fall Back! | Presented by DeLena Ciamacc

 

Daylight Saving for 2020: When Does the Time Change?

Source: Farmer’s Almanac                  URL LINK: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/daylight-saving-time-change

When Do We “Fall Back” In 2020?

The first Sunday in November is when Daylight Saving Time ends in most areas of the U.S., so in 2020 we’ll “fall back” one hour and return to Standard Time on Sunday, November 1, 2020, at 2 a.m. 

Be sure to set your clocks back one hour before bed on Halloween night!

The return of Standard Time means the sun will rise a little earlier (at least according to our clocks) so if you’re an early riser, you’ll enjoy the rays as you have your breakfast. And you’ll “gain” one hour of sleep. The bad news? It will be dark by the time most of us get out of work.

Is There A Benefit to DST?

The idea behind moving the clocks twice a year is to take better advantage of the sun’s natural electricity (or light). Most of us get out of bed after the sun has risen and go to bed after it has set. But what if the sun rose and set later? When we spring forward and fall back, we’re not really “saving” time; we’re just giving up a little sun in the morning and adding it to the evening. So will we better utilize the sun’s illumination during this new-found sunlight?

Later sunsets cause people to get out and do more in the evenings. Some argue that this results in an increase in our gasoline consumption as we drive around more during the lighter evenings. And if it’s darker in the morning, doesn’t that mean more electricity will be needed to get ready for school and work?

DST: Love It or Hate It?

How you feel about Daylight Saving Time probably depends on whether you are an early riser or a night owl. Obviously, changing the number on a clock doesn’t actually add any time to our days. That point was eloquently made in this old joke:

When told the reason for daylight saving time the old Native American man said,

“Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”

However, adding an hour of daylight onto the end of the day, after most of us have gotten out of work, can feel like a gift after a long winter of dark evenings. As the warmer spring weather arrives, nothing could be nicer than having more time in the evening to enjoy it.

Which U.S. States Don’t Observe DST?

According to U.S. law, states can choose whether or not to observe DST. At present, Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii, plus a few other U.S. territories, are the only places in the U.S. that do not observe DST and stay on standard time all year long.

Indiana did not vote to observe DST until April of 2006. Prior to that, some counties in the state observed it while others didn’t, which caused a lot of confusion, particularly since Indiana is split into two time zones already!

Do Other Countries Observe Daylight Saving Time?

At least 40 countries worldwide observe Daylight Saving Time, including most of Canada, though the majority of Saskatchewan and parts of northeastern British Columbia don’t participate.

For obvious reasons, most countries near the equator don’t deviate from standard time.

Are You Saying it Correctly?

The correct phrasing is “Daylight Saving Time” (not “savings” with an s), meaning: a time for saving daylight!

When Does the Time Change in Spring? Here’s When We “Spring Forward” In 2021:

Daylight Saving Time will begin at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 14, 2021 in most areas of the U.S. We officially consider ourselves “saving daylight hours,” so, in your time zone, you’ll be on “Daylight Time” (EDT, CDT, MDT, or PDT).

This is the most dreaded of the time changes because it feels as though we’re losing an hour of sleep. So, if you normally wake up at 6 am, you’ll be rising at 5 am even though the clock face says 6 am.

Is Benjamin Franklin To Blame For DST?

Ben Franklin is often credited for inventing the idea of Daylight Saving Time, due to his partially tongue-in-cheek letter. However, Franklin seemed to understand the point of view of the Old Indian in the joke above. Rather than changing the clocks, he simply advised us to change our schedules to better align with nature.

Is DST A Practice Whose Time Has Come?

Since Daylight Saving Time was introduced, lawmakers have, on occasion, seen fit to fiddle with it. This happened in the 70s, during the oil crisis, and again several years ago. Since 2007, Daylight Saving Time got longer, beginning in March and ending in November, instead of April and October, respectively. But it looks like we won’t be doing away with it any time soon.

 

Remember, DST is a good time of year to change the batteries on your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors!