Here at Oxford University Press, we’re getting ready for the holiday season, and we were inspired by the new, twenty-firstĀ edition of the Atlas of the World to explore holiday traditions from around the world, including ourĀ 2014 Place of the Year, Scotland. Take a look at the map below to learn and see a little bit about the food, decorations, and other traditions of holiday celebrations taking place around the world at this time of year.
Image credit: Christmas lights on the tree in front of the Capitol Building, Washington, DC by Jonathan McIntosh. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Holiday traditions from around the world appeared first on OUPblog.
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Not-big-enough paper shoe - Needs more room for chocolate |
My tutorial for making
paper shoes for St. Nicholas Day is probably my most popular post ever, which kind of cracks me up, since I hadn't imagined there would be much demand for such a goofy thing as a paper shoe. It's so popular that this cool online magazine,
InCulture, asked me if they could reprint it this month as part of their holiday issue. You can find it
here - and check out the rest of the magazine while you're at it. Lots of interesting articles on multicultural issues for kids and parents.
Anyway, I've recently learned there is an even greater need out there: a tutorial and template for a paper boot! Because boots are also traditional to put out for St. Nicholas Day and well-worn ones tend to smell even worse than used sneakers do, if that's possible. More importantly, a paper boot can hold WAY more chocolates and other goodies than a paper shoe can. That's a need I can appreciate.
I didn't really have any idea how to make a paper boot, though, so I turned to my smartest, most trusted friend: Ms. Google.
And she let me down. The only templates/examples I could find for paper boots were really lame. In particular, they failed on the most important characteristic of a paper boot: capacity. This is because they were basically boot-shaped envelopes.
I have limited footwear engineering skills. Really, that paper shoe pretty much exhausted them. Though I do have these really, really cool vintage-maybe-antique children's shoe "lasts." (See, I even know the technical lingo.) They're iron and really, really heavy.
I bought them at an estate sale recently, even though I have no intention of becoming a shoemaker and don't have young children anymo
Love this!
St Nick
www.StNicksday.com