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Let’s face it, most holidays already marked on your calendar are pretty boring -Valentine’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day…yawn. If you really want to geek up your wall calendar and ensure you celebrate holidays more appropriate to your specific interests, don’t miss io9′s round up of great science holiday including Pi approximation day (July 22) and Hagfish Day (October 17). Of course, since they’re all science related, certain other geek holidays are left out -after all, you can’t miss out on Towel Day.
Even if you don’t live in America, you’re probably familiar with our New Year’s Eve traditions, being as how they’re played on TV stations across the globe and portrayed in countless movies. That being said, there are tons more celebrations out there that don’t involve kissing at midnight, watching a ball drop and staring at fireworks in awe. Here are a few New Year’s Eve traditions from around the world.
Image Via asterix611 [Flickr]
It’s always nice to get a gift from a neighbor, friend or family member, but in some countries, visitors bearing gifts are practically guaranteed on the first day of the year. The tradition is commonly known as First-Footing and while it’s practiced everywhere from Russia to Wales to parts of the U.S., it is most common in Scotland. While the gifts brought for the occasion are important as they represent the type of luck the recipient will receive, it is also important who brings the gift. Ideally, the first person to enter a home at this period will be a tall, dark man, as this will bring the most luck.
Scotland’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are known as Hogmanay and the celebration is responsible for introducing the “Auld Lang Syne” song to the world. But the festivities vary from place to place and while some areas celebrate by singing and linking arms at the appropriate point in the song, other celebrations are much more dangerous.
In Stonehaven, locals make up balls of chicken wire filled with newspapers, sticks and rags that sometimes measure up to two feet wide. Each ball is attached to a chain or nonflammable rope about three feet long. At midnight, the balls are then set on fire and swung around the heads of their creators as other revelers watch the spectacle. Eventually, the fireballs are put out or thrown into the harbor. Despite the dangers, the event has drawn in many tourists and the small town now sees around 12,000 people standing in the city streets to watch the fire balls spin. If you want to see the action without risking life and limb, the celebration is now streamed on the internet.
Image Via MrPurple [Wikipedia]
If you just can’t get enough burning out of your New Year’s experience and you’ve already visited Stonehaven, then perhaps it’s time to purchase a ticket to Ecuador. That’s because on New Year’s Eve, locals line the streets with effigies of people who have made a negative impact on the last year, most commonly, unpopular politicians. Thousands of dummies are lit up at the stroke of midnight in an effort to prevent the negative events associate with those people from impacting the new year.
Image Via lowfill [Flickr]
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Did you know the third Thursday of every April is National High Five Day? That would be April 21 this year. While the best way to celebrate High Five Day is simply to give out your fair share of celebratory slaps, it can also help to know your history and when it comes to the high five, that history is actually rather recent.
Long before the high five, there was the low five, although, at the time it was known as “giving skin” and “slapping skin.” The low five started way back in the jazz age and while there seems to be no detailed record of how it was started, it was a fairly popular gesture amongst jazz musicians. This was immortalized throughout history when Al Jolson gives a low five in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer.
The 1941 Abbot and Costello film In the Navy takes note of this with the Andrews Sisters song, “Gimme Some Skin, My Friend.”
Slapping five continued to be a popular gesture in the African American culture and you can see black characters slapping hands in movies all the way up to blaxploitation films from the seventies
Image via Outsports
The high five that most people credit as the first took place in 1977. It was exchanged between Dusty Baker and Glen Burke at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. Burke gave Baker a raised hand to slap in celebration after Baker scored a home run.
Murray State University basketball player Lamont Sleets has challenged this story though, claiming that he developed the gesture while playing on his college team in the 1960’s. This isn’t the only high five challenge between basketball and baseball players. A number of basketballers claim to have started using the term “high five” during their 1979/1980 season. University of Louisville baseball player Derek Smith disputes this though and claims that he is the originator of the term.
No matter who originated or named it though, the gesture was an immediate success in sports circles as soon as Baker and Burke’s slap was seen around the country. It was soon being used by teams across the country, most notably the 1980 Louisville Cardinals basketball team, who high fived each other throughout their run for the title and helped bring it to the forefront of American consciousness.
Image via bgubitz [Wikipedia]
By 1980, the noun “high five” was in the Oxford English Dictionary and by 1981, it was added as a verb as well.
In the eighties, the gesture took on a life of its own and it seemed like every sitcom character was high fiving someone at least once per episode. It isn’t surprising that the high five took a dive in popularity through the nineties and popular culture tried to cleanse itself of the over saturation of the gesture. Even so, the high five has always continued to have its fans and in 2002, three University of Virginia Students decided to give the high five its due.
The three students decided they wanted to start their own holiday and they agreed that honoring the lost art of the high five would be the perfect reason to celebrate. The ultimate goal of the holiday was to better people’s days by giving high fives to strangers, who might then be inspired to give high fives to others. While the headquarters of the holiday started on the university campus, it quickly spread thanks to the power of the internet.
By 2005, the idea had gained enough momentum that the City of San Diego actually agreed to recognize National High Five Day as an official city celebration. (Being a long-term resident of America’s Finest City, I admit that I was highly upset that I had never heard of the city’s decree until I started writing this article.)
So now that you know about National High Five Day and about the gesture’s respectable origin story, it is up to you, dear readers to spread the word, and the skin. Share your support of high fives on April 21 and every day. Just remember to do it sparingly. After all, an overused high five is worse than no high five at all and we don’t want this great cultural connection to fade away every again.
Sources: Wikipedia, High Five Me, National High Five Project
Still looking for the perfect Halloween costume that really expresses your interests? Well, if you’re looking for something nerdy, geeky or dorky, we’ve got you covered with this ultimate guide to geeky Halloween costumes.
If you thought wheelchair-bound people couldn’t have any fun on Halloween, think again. This tie fighter costume takes advantage of the chair and incorporates it into an undeniably cool Star Wars costume.
The Darth Vader with his Death Star costume might not be the most elaborate Star Wars costume, but it makes up for lack of complexity with comfort and the use of the baby bump to fill in the Death Star is just brilliant.
We’ve all seen our share of hokey, horse-riding costumes, but using expansion foam to construct an incredibly realistic looking tauntaun with Luke Skywalker on top is a whole different story.
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There are tons of Transformers costumes out there and while most of them are pretty cool, few of them look so convincing when transformed into a car.
Yes, this Star Trek dog costume is geeky, and yes the dog does look cute in a sad way. But no, this costume isn’t a good idea. And no, he won’t like having cardboard and beer cans taped to his back.
Sure you could be Kingpin, Two-Face or Mystique, but none of those characters have awesome arms growing out of their back like Doctor Octopus. It’s a way cooler look to carry around your enemy on your back.
Sure he might need to change his name to Copper Man in this Jules Verne-inspired take on the classic Marvel hero, but it doesn’t make the character any less cool.
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This Big Daddy costume is amazing in that it not only looks exactly like the characters in the videogame, but the left arm drill actually spins thanks to the help of a hidden electric drill inside the costume.
It takes one dedicated dad to put something like this together for his three year old, but if you have the dedication and technical proficiency, you can follow The Aging Gamer’s instructions on how to put together a Mega Man costume for your little one.
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This Gameboy costume has a working monitor on it displaying Tetris, even better, the game can be controlled with the buttons on the costume.
The best thing about this weird meme costume is that the original cat in the video looked so fake and awkward, just like this woman.
I think the best thing about these two costumes is the intricate background details behind the “actors,” which really gives a 3D feeling to the video area of the page.
Most kids who dress as animals choose dog or cat costumes, but this webbegong shark costume is not only unique, but incredibly accurate as well. The little two year-old was obsessed with the sharks and his seamstress mother was more than happy to indulge in his interests.
What was your favorite costume ever? Do you know what you’ll be this year?
The Big Picture blog from The Boston Globe has a lovely roundup of blossoming flowers and (better yet) images of the way people all over the world celebrate the arrival of spring. Shown here is a party in Afghanistan, where the equinox is celebrated as the beginning of the new year. Link -via the Presurfer
Image credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani
