Candy Canes Get Creative

Today is Candy Cane Day. For centuries, candy canes were peppermint-flavored, red-and-white-striped, sticks of candy. In recent years, the flavors have expanded to include fruit punch, cinnamon, and watermelon, with bright colors to match. Those seem fine, but you can also get mac-and-cheese, ham, pickle, rotisserie chicken, pizza, or clam candy canes! Yuck!

No Punching on Boxing Day

December 26th, St. Stephen’s Day, is known as Boxing Day in many countries. It’s named for the Christmas box some employers give to their employees, or the donation box outside churches. In Ireland, it’s also the Day of the Wren. Straw-costumed Wrenboys parade through town, singing and dancing, and collecting money for charity.

Toys Used to Be Life-Threatening

A popular Christmas gift for kids years ago used to be a chemistry set. But those sets could be dangerous! They contained poisonous cyanide to dissolve gold, blowtorches to make glass test tubes, radioactive uranium to practice measuring radiation, and carcinogenic asbestos to dust for fingerprints. Now some chemistry sets don’t even contain chemicals!

The Reason For the Season

Today is Christmas, a festival celebrated by billions of people to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. We don’t know the date Jesus was actually born, but Christmas has been December 25th since the year 336. It is marked with gift giving and Santa Claus, Christmas trees and lights, church services, songs and gatherings.

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