What to Celebrate January 18 thru 24, 2021
Celebration Ideas for January 18 – 24, 2021
How’s your 2021 going so far? Broken any (all) of your resolutions yet? Well we have a resolution that’s easy to keep: Celebrate weird, unofficial holidays every day! And even some official but lesser known ones.
Because having something to look forward to makes every day brighter. So go ahead:
Take a peek and plan your week. And do remember to …
Enjoy!
Celebrate for the rest of January
Mmmm … January’s a delicious month. And a good time to get into simpler, healthier foods with simpler preparation. And here are the celebrations to get you started.
National Hot Tea Month: Cold winter days are just made for curling up with a warm drink. And for January that drink is hot tea! So make sure you have plenty of your favorite tea(s) on hand. And maybe try some new teas too. But don’t stick with just regular tea. Add some variety with tea lattes, ginger tea, and others.
National Oatmeal Month: Oatmeal may be a simple meal, but it’s also filling, nutritious, and delicious! And you can dress it up in so many ways. Add fruit, spices, chocolate, peanut butter, and pretty much anything you’d like. So get creative and experiment with whatever sounds good to you. Try both rolled oats and steel cut, too. They may both be oatmeal, but they’re quite different!
National Slow Cooking Month: Give your slow cooker a workout this month. Cook as much as possible in it. After all, you can make almost anything in it, from soups to stews and roasts. And oatmeal! You can even make desserts, including cake in a slow cooker!
National Soup Month: What was one of the things we said works great in a slow cooker? … Oh yeah, soup! So you really have no excuse not to celebrate this one. Not sure where to start making soup in your slow cooker? Here’s a list of recipes to get you started (yes, a few are actually stews, but who cares?!).
Weekly Celebrations for January 18 to 24
Healthy, happy, and delicious, that’s what this week is all about!
Healthy Weight Week (January 17 – 23, 2021): For this week we focus on getting to and/or maintaining a healthy weight. Not so we can “be skinny” or “look great,” but so our bodies can be as healthy as possible. What that means is we work toward our healthy weights by making lifestyle changes, including eating better and moving more, rather than trying fad diets & other gimmicks (an idea stressed on the 19th with Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day). Get some tips for making small changes that’ll add up to real progress here.
National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week: You know what makes eating healthier easier? Foods that taste good! Or drinks in this case. As in fresh squeezed juice. Now obviously you can squeeze yourself some orange juice. And it’ll be amazing. But you probably want some variety in those juices. Start your fresh squeezed juice journey with these juices. No juicer? No problem, use this trick instead.
Hunt for Happiness Week (Postponed?!): Yes, this celebration of happiness was originally scheduled for January 17 – 23, but according to the SOHP website it’s been postponed. Luckily we all have the power to hunt for happiness all by ourselves. So maybe celebrate this week unofficially while we wait for word on the official celebration’s return (you can sign up to find out the new dates!)? Also, there is a 5-Day Raise Your Vibe Challenge you could do this week instead. Especially since this year’s Hunt For Happiness Week theme was also going to be (and hopefully still will be) Raise Your Vibe!
Celebration Days coming up for Jan. 18 thru Jan. 24
Bears and penguins and squirrels, oh my! Along with popcorn and buttercrunch and blondies. But only after you put in your Day of Service. We’re pretty sure Pooh would approve.
So wear sweatpants, give compliments, and celebrate life with a big ol’ belly laugh!
Sounds like the perfect fun-tastic week to us!
January 18
National Winnie the Pooh Day: Celebrate the bear with little brain on his creator’s birthday. So read some Pooh stories or watch a movie. Or just try to be a bit more like this silly bear: kindhearted and loyal. Hmmm … sounds like he may not be nearly as silly or brainless as he thinks.
MLK Day of Service: On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day honor his legacy by giving your time to help others. His dream has not yet been fulfilled, but we can all take steps toward finally making the better world he envisioned a reality. The service opportunities may look a bit different in this time of COVID-19, but the need for volunteers is greater than ever.
National Thesaurus Day: It’s Peter Mark Roget’s birthday, so we must celebrate! Who’s that you ask? Why the author (writer/wordsmith/scribe) of Roget’s Thesaurus, of course. So celebrate (rejoice/jubilate/whoop it up) with a party (bash/do/shindig) in his honor (homage/tribute/appreciation). Bring all your favorite synonyms (alternative expressions/euphemisms/subsitutes). Or even antonyms (opposites/contradictions/inverses). Clearly not all word substitutions work as well as others …
National Peking Duck Day: If you can, enjoy the amazingly flavorful national dish of China to celebrate this day. Preparation involves drying and glazing and takes days. But the crispy skin and tender meat are well worth it. If you’re feeling ambitious and have the time (remember, days) consider making Peking Duck at home.
January 19
National Popcorn Day: Eat popcorn. Plain. Buttered. Caramelled. Cheesed. Chocolated. It doesn’t matter. (The fact that some of those aren’t words doesn’t matter, either). Just eat popcorn. 😋
Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day: Many people’s New Year’s resolutions include losing weight and/or eating healthier. Which makes them vulnerable to people peddling fad diets that don’t work and may even be unhealthy or even dangerous. Use this day to make a true healthy eating and active life-style plan, and ditch the short-term, weight-loss diets for good.
Tin Can Day: Celebrate the anniversary of the 1st US patent on the revolutionary food storage container: the tin can. Now the tin can had been patented in the UK some 15 years earlier, but apparently we don’t talk about that here in the US. 😉 And anyway, nobody came up with a good way to open these cans until 1858 when Ezra Warner got the first patent for a can opener.
World Quark Day: Surely you’ve heard of quark by now? It’s a fresh cheese you can make at home and then use wherever you’d use other fresh cheeses. You can even use it in place of yogurt or sour cream. It’s still not too common in the US, but if we keep celebrating this day we can help change that!
January 20
Penguin Awareness Day: Penguins are fascinating birds we can’t help but love. But did you realize there are actually 18 different species? They don’t all look like the Emperor penguins you probably think of when you hear the word penguin. Learn more about the different penguins and how we can help protect them for this day.
National Disc Jockey Day: This day honors influential DJ Albert James Freed (Moondog) on the anniversary of his death. But let’s honor all the DJ’s, especially those who haven’t been able to spin their tunes for months due to the pandemic. If you miss going to the clubs you can bet they miss it even more. So give your favorite DJ’s a shoutout for the day.
National Cheese Lover’s Day: Eat all your favorite cheeses in all your favorite ways! Snack on a block of Colby. Bake some Brie. Spread goat cheese on crackers. Make a cheese souffle. Or a cheesecake. Or both! Sprinkle bleu cheese on your salad. Melt some cheddar for nachos. Or whatever else your taste buds desire!
National Buttercrunch Day: After all that cheese you’re going to need something sweet. And something crunchy, too. Buttercrunch to the rescue! This chocolate-covered, crispy toffee candy is delightful all on it’s own and also adds pizazz to ice cream and cakes (cheesecake!) when sprinkled over the top.
January 21
Squirrel Appreciation Day: What do you mean you don’t appreciate squirrels? These little rascals are quite entertaining if you just give them a chance. At least give them this one day?
National Hug Your Puppy Day: If you have a puppy you know what to do! If you don’t have a puppy, borrow one! Seriously, your friends probably have puppies. So do shelters and rescues (although you might need appointments, depending on how they’re handling the pandemic restrictions). But don’t worry if you can’t find any puppies to hug. Your adult dogs (and probably even kittens and cats!) will be happy to accept those hugs.
International Sweatpants Day: You’ll want to be as comfortable as possible while hugging those puppies! And what better way to do that than by wearing sweatpants?!
Get to Know Your Customers Day: If you have a business you know how important your customers are. Without them you don’t have a business! So get to know them and their needs better for this day. And regularly throughout the year. This past year especially a lot of people have gone out of their way to help keep their favorite small businesses in business. Let them know you appreciate it, and see if there are ways to make your customers even happier going forward.
National Granola Bar Day: Fuel your squirrel appreciation, puppy hugging, and customer knowing with granola bars. Because these energy-packed bars can help keep you going no matter how many squirrels, puppies, and customers await your attention.
January 22
National Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day: Really you should answer your cat’s questions any day of the year. To do otherwise is to be rude. But we get it. Some cats just don’t stop with the questions. And it’s easy to start putting off answering. But for this day give your cat and its questions your full attention and answer all the questions the best you can. No matter how many questions your cat comes up with. 😻
Celebration of Life Day: This day began as a celebration of the children (and grandchildren, no doubt!) in our lives. Because aren’t they worth celebrating? At some point it became a day to celebrate all the good in our lives … including and especially those children, of course! But not everybody has children, and children aren’t the only good things about life. So celebrate any and all people, animals, and things that make your life special.
National Blonde Brownie Day: Make yourself a batch of blondies. Then devour them! All of them. Don’t share a single crumb. Ok, you can share them if you’d like. But if you have a cat we’re pretty sure one of the questions you’re going to have to answer is “Why would you want to share any of your food?” At least that would be our cat’s question …
January 23
National Pie Day: Celebrate Charlie Papazian’s birthday with a slice or 2 of pie. Why? Because he created this day. And it’s his birthday.
National Handwriting Day: On this day we write. With pen and paper, not keyboard and screen. What to write? Whatever you’d like! A letter, a list, a poem. Maybe even start a journal so you’ll have to write something every day! Or most days anyway …
January 24
Change a Pet’s Life Day: What’s the best way to change a pet’s life? Spring it from jail! That would be the cages of a shelter or rescue organization. And that’s how this day is meant to be celebrated. Although if you can’t adopt a pet an alternate celebrations could be fostering a pet (or 2 or 3) so they can at least be in a home instead of a cage. Other ideas include donating to your favorite shelter/rescue or volunteering. At least spread the word about this day!
Global Belly Laugh Day: On 1/24 at 1:24 pm (local time) we laugh. A great big, energy-filled belly laugh. Because laughter is good for us and makes us feel happy. And right now especially we need more of that.
National Compliment Day: Compliment at least one person for the day. More if you can! Compliments make people feel good, and that makes you feel good too. Just make sure your compliments are sincere. It’s often pretty obvious when a compliment is fake. And that’s not at all what the day is about.
Beer Can Appreciation Day: Beer arrived in cans back in 1935. Those cans were a bit sturdier than today’s beer cans, but people loved them and even preferred them to bottles. Celebrate by popping open a can of beer & toasting Krueger Brewing Company and American Can Company who made it possible.
National Peanut Butter Day: Eat peanut butter all day! It’s easy. Peanut butter pancakes or muffins for breakfast. PB & J for lunch. And beef or chicken satay for dinner. Don’t forget the peanut butter cups for a snack and peanut butter brownies for dessert!
