On This Day: January 31st … Strange Holidays
Backward Day
Inspire Your Heart With An Art Day
National Hot Chocolate Day
I’m breaking out the hot chocolate as the weather here is turning colder and the fact it makes me feel good. Has anyone out there thought as I have that January just blew right by you at break necking speed? Busy month all the way around. Maybe Backward Day may let us travel back a few days to catch our breath—or not.
Let me get started.
Inspire Your Heart With An Art Day
Art is a thing that is in existence since the start of the human civilization. It is appreciated both for its beauty and happiness it gives to those who see it. There are different forms of arts like paintings, music, theatre, sculptures, dance or poetry and they are indeed to be celebrated with a Day in the calendar. Take time to visit the nearest gallery, theatre, cinema, music venue and get inspired.
The history, origin, and the year since the Inspire Your Heart With Art Day has been in the celebration are unknown. The founder is also not known. However, the celebration for art has been promoted by various arts organizations. The day is created to celebrate all forms of art and the effect it has on your heart. Explore the many genres of art as every form of art is valued and appreciated for every other reason. Art is a form of feel that inspires, encourages, and it touches one’s soul, heart, and mind. This day is the best time to have a closer look at the art and find what the artist is trying to say through it. Open up your mind and heart to listen to the art as it has the power to inspire our hearts.
Art refers to the diverse range of human activities including the painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and other visual media. Creation of images or objects, visual arts marks the oldest documented forms of art. The archaeologists have found the first artefacts of human art, and it dates back to the Stone Age. Over the years, various art forms have developed. It is appreciated for a variety of reasons although it doesn’t have any practical value. Art let the person express his own imagination and creativity. It is also a form of communication that bridges the gap over the language barrier. Art plays a major role in various aspects like in the entertainment of therapy, for raising awareness and in evoking all sorts of emotions.
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”—Pablo Picasso
National Hot Chocolate Day
We make hot cocoa with cocoa powder, heated milk or water, and sugar. We’re able to do this thanks to a process developed by father and son chemists. For the thicker, more flavorful beverage, we make hot chocolate from ground chocolate containing cocoa butter. It is also called drinking chocolate. Hot chocolate has also been around longer than hot cocoa. In the early 1800s, Casparus van Houten Sr. developed a process to separate the cocoa solids from the butter. His son, Coenraad Johannes made those fats more soluble in water. Together their processes made cocoa powder possible.
But before then, everyone drank hot chocolate. This thicker, creamier beverage often offered medicinal benefits for stomach ailments during the 19th century. In fact, long before the beverage’s popularity in Victorian times, it served in ceremonial culture.
However, humans have been drinking chocolate for a long time. The Mayans likely created the first chocolate beverage 2000 years ago. The Aztecs also included a cocoa beverage as an essential part of their culture by 1400 AD. When Europeans began exploring Central and South America, explorers brought chocolate and the beverage back with them to Europe from Mexico.
Did you know that there are health benefits to drinking hot chocolate. Cocoa contains significant amounts of antioxidants that may help prevent cancer. Studies have shown the flavonoids in chocolate may have a positive effect on arterial health and memory.
Start drinking more hot chocolate, people!
Backward Day
Backward Day is a day to do everything backwards. Use your imagination, and Backward Day can be lots of fun. It's especially popular with school aged kids.
Try writing backwards or reading backwards. Wear your shirt with the back in the front. Eat your meal, starting with dessert. Now that's what I call fun! Walk backwards, or talk backwards. Play a board game backwards, from the finish line to the start. Are you starting to get the picture!?
This day is limited only by your imagination.
Sarah Nicole Miller and Megan Emily Scott created Backwards Day on January 29, 1961. They were thinking about making arts and crafts, while milking cows on the Miller family farm, when the idea struck them. Later that evening, they sat down and made the rules. The idea got out amid the community, and on January 31, 1962, the first Backwards Day occurred. The two women were walking down the street, when they saw all the townspeople doing things backwards!
"There is progress whether ye are going forward or backward.
The thing is to move!"—Edward Cayce
More strange holidays are coming!