December 8th : Themes for celebration and contemplation
If you are looking for some themes and points of interest to add to your advent countdown, the Bulldogz Christmas spirit is in full flow and we can provide you with some of the fun, serious and little known points of celebration for each day on this magical countdown.
The Christmas Film World Cup Group stage voting is open today. All the information you need on the event can be found here.
December 8
Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day
This is a genuinely fun idea. A day dedicated to precisely what it describes. Pretend to be a time traveller for the day. This has been traced back to a blog post linked here. It sets out the basic rules for participating in the activity, they offer three types of time traveller and explain the idea is to stay in character, make really bad attempts to keep a low profile and never directly admit to being a time traveller.
The role-playing possibilities in class are endless, this could be used to develop characters and enact limitless conversation activities which are a little bit more imaginative.
Day of Lard
This is a concept that only came into being in only 2018 under the direction of the "Healthy Fats Coalition" as a celebration of traditional, authentic animal fat. This is, unsurprisingly, another of these weirdly wonderful American ideas. Curiously, a lard based cookie recipe still used in Spain, called Polvorones (and very traditional for Christmas time) dates back from the era of the Spanish inquisition when it was illegal to use anything but lard (in order to catch Jews and Muslims). This website has a widely used and simple recipe for Polvorones and provides the list of varying names the recipe has been given in various countries around the world.
The US newspaper "Lancaster Online" has a very interesting article on the production of lard through history on their website here.
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
A Catholic holiday celebrating the immaculate conception. This generally means that if you are in Spain, you get another holiday. If you want to know more, the wikipedia page is pretty substantive.
December 8th in History
Events
1955 – The Flag of Europe is adopted by Council of Europe.
1980 – John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota in New York City
2019 – First confirmed case of COVID-19 in China
Births
1542 – Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1587)
1925 – Sammy Davis, Jr., American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1990)
1943 – Jim Morrison, American singer-songwriter and poet (d. 1971)
1966 – Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer-songwriter
Deaths
1980 – John Lennon, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1940)
Christmas films
Guilt-stricken after a job gone wrong, hitman Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be.
Group B 3rd Seed and a real dark horse in the Christmas film world cup stable. Regardless of your opinions on the validity of the Christmas claim, it is a great film and why not watch it now?
A successful song-and-dance team become romantically involved with a sister act and team up to save the failing Vermont inn of their former commanding general.
Group A third seed: A film everyone can reference but how many have actually seen? What better moment than now?
Christmas songs
It seems fitting to pick John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is over)" as the song for 8th December, the anniversary of his murder. It has a clear protest message built into the title and is a much loved Christmas song. Find out more at the song homepage here
Lost Clauses versions