December 22, 2013: Clearly, date nut bread is an amazing thing, because there are not one, but TWO National Date Nut Bread Days. Today, as well as September 8th. I’ve never had date nut bread; maybe I should go out and find some, if it’s so very popular. Today is also Christmas Tree Lights Day, marking the first day they were ever used back in 1882. Before that, they used candles. Which just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. The electric lights were terribly expensive at the beginning, and didn’t really become affordable enough to replace candles for the masses until the 1930s.

(And I bet in 1883, when inventor Edward Johnson pulled his newfangled electric lights out for another Christmas, they were all tangled to heck.)