I hadn't realized today's Christmas tradition originates with Seinfeld. It comes from Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe who based it on a holiday his own father invented in 1966 (it wasn't tied to Christmas in the O'Keefe family - read more HERE).
Google's top entry for December 23 traditions comes from Wikipedia:The non-commercial holiday's celebration, as depicted on Seinfeld, occurs on December 23 and includes a Festivus dinner, an unadorned aluminum Festivus pole, practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength", and the labeling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles".
Would Norway fall for Seinfeld? It has the tradition of "Little Christmas Eve" on December 23rd. Traditions include decorating the Christmas tree, making a gingerbread house, or eating risengrynsgrøt; a hot rice pudding served with sugar, cinnamon and butter. An almond is hidden in the pudding, and if the almond turns up in your portion, you win a marzipan pig!
Some sites report that Norway has the closest town to the geographic North Pole - Longyearbyen - it is 1,310.44 km south of the North Pole. It is famous for the Doomsday Seed Vault, which is storing every known crop on the planet.
Yet there are different answers for what land mass and town are closest to the North Pole. That seems unusual, as I thought it would be measurable. Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast of Greenland is said to be 700 km from the North Pole. The nearest permanently inhabited place is reported to be Alert, Nunavut and it is 817 km away. This would be Santa's market town - his workshop and residence are located at the North Pole - at postal code - H0H 0H0 - not very similar to Alert's at V0N 1A0.
And what time would it be at the North Pole? The North Pole lacks a time zone. Time is determined by longitude. The time of day is more-or-less synchronized to the position of the sun in the sky. At the North Pole, the sun rises and sets only once per year, and all lines of longitude and hence all time zones, converge. Any time zone can be used there. Celebrating January 1st would be a feat in itself.
We continue our Christmas Greetings series today - Niagara's Winter Orchard receives the Northern Lights of Christmas.
Yesterday's topic included the Antarctic. Today let's look the other way towards the Arctic Circle. This is slightly different, as Antartica is a place, and the arctic circle is a parallel - a line of latitude, with the North Pole at its centre.
The Arctic Circle has a significant role in marking the daily patterns of sunlight and darkness. This is where there is the midnight sun and the polar night. Polar night starts to happen at the fall equinox, so they have a little bit of midnight sun to go.
And then there are the Magnetic Poles. These are locations on the Earth's surface where the planet's magnetic field points straight downwards at the north magnetic pole and upwards at the south magnetic pole. An intriguing feature of the poles is that they are always moving; in the case of the magnetic poles, only an average position can be determined.
This from the Canadian Encyclopedia: "There remains one mystery: every 100 000 years or so, Earth's magnetic field wanes, and the magnetic poles reverse. Volcanic flows provide a logbook of these periodic reversals, because lava remains magnetized in the direction of the magnetic field at the time it cooled. This property provided some of the early hard evidence for the theory of PLATE TECTONICS. Geophysicists speculate that these magnetic flip-flops are due to the chaotic nature of the flow of magma in Earth's core. When will the next reversal occur? There seems to be no pattern, so scientists are unable to make any predictions."
So what if Earth's magnetic poles flip? Will the world end for us? First of all, it takes between 1,000 and 10,000 years to reverse. It is a slow process. Scientists say it's the weak in-between phase that would be roughest on Earthlings. What would happen is ozone holes would form due to charged particles bombarding Earth's atmosphere during solar storms. They could last from one to 10 years. The risk identified would be skin cancer.
The more significant concern is technology. Solar storms can damage satellites, cause power outages, interrupt radio communications. And then all the species that rely on geomagnetism for navigation - bees, salmon, turtles, whales, bacteria and pigeons. What will happen, scientists don't know. What we know is the geomagnetic field is currently weakening. We could follow more topics on this at Livescience.com
The Arctic Circle has a significant role in marking the daily patterns of sunlight and darkness. This is where there is the midnight sun and the polar night. Polar night starts to happen at the fall equinox, so they have a little bit of midnight sun to go. 