December 2018 calendar: Looking for something to do or visit?

1-31, National Impaired Driving Prevention Month.

1, World AIDS Day.

1, Chester Greenwood Day Parade. Farmington, ME. Earmuff-themed parade commemorating inventor of the earmuff. Web: franklincountymaine.org.

1 and 8, Christmas Candlelightings. Roscoe Village, Coshocton, OH. Web: roscoevillage.com

1-31, Christmas New Orleans Style. New Orleans, LA. Concerts, caroling Web: fqfi.org.

1-2, Christmas On The Prairie. Saunders County Museum, Wahoo, NE. Web: saunderscomuseum.org.

1-2, England: Rochester Dickensian Christmas Festival. Rochester, Kent. Web: rochesterdickensfestival.org.uk or visitmedway.org.

1, Natchitoches Christmas Festival. Natchitoches, LA. 92nd annual. Web: natchitocheschristmas.com.

2, Advent, First Sunday. Advent includes the four Sundays before Christmas, Dec 2, Dec 9, Dec 16 and Dec 23 in 2018.

2, Hanukkah Begins At Sundown.

2, Christmas To Remember. Laurel, MT. 33rd annual.

2-Jan 6, 2019, Netherlands: Midwinter Horn Blowing. Midwinter horn blowing, announcing the birth of Christ, begins with Advent and continues until Epiphany, Jan 6.

2-10, Hanukkah, Festival of Lights.

5, Austria: Krampuslauf. Salzburg region. On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, Austrians celebrate the Krampuslauf (Krampus Run). Children are invited to throw snowballs at the devilish Krampus who punishes bad children.

6-8, Clute’s Christmas In The Park. Clute Municipal Park, Clute, TX.

6, National Miners Day.

6, Saint Nicholas Day. One of the most venerated saints of both Eastern and Western Christian churches, of whose life little is known, except that he was Bishop of Myra (in what is today Turkey) in the 4th century. He has been especially noted for his charity.

7-8, Christmas Walk And House Tour Geneva, IL. Web: genevachamber.com.

10, Nobel Prize Awards Ceremonies. Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden.

14-Jan 5, 2019, Christmas Bird Count. Web: audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count.

15-16, AKC National Championship. Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL. Web: akc.org.

16-24, MEXICO: Posadas. A nine-day annual celebration. Processions of pilgrims knock at doors asking for shelter.

23, Community Carol Sing. Mystic, CT. Web: mysticseaport.org.

24, Christmas Eve.

24, ENGLAND: Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols: 100th Anniversary. King’s College Chapel, Cambridge University, Cambridge. Since 1918, a Christmas Eve service of carols and readings from the Bible performed by the Choir of King’s College. Web: kings.cam.ac.uk.

25, Christmas.

26, Boxing Day. Dec 26. A day when Christmas gift boxes have been expected by a postman, the lamplighter, the dustman and generally by all those functionaries who render services to the public at large, without receiving payment therefore from any individual.

28, Holy Innocents Day (Childermas). Commemoration of the massacre of children at Bethlehem, ordered by King Herod, who wanted to destroy, among them, the infant Savior. Early and medieval accounts claimed as many as 144,000 victims, but more recent writers, noting that Bethlehem was a very small town, have revised the estimates of the number of children killed to between 6 and 20.

31, First Night. Family-oriented, nonalcoholic community celebrations of the New Year-first observed in Boston, MA, in 1975.

31, Leap Second Adjustment Time. One of the times that have been favored for the addition or subtraction of a second to or from clock time (to coordinate atomic and astronomical time).

31, New Year’s Eve.

31, SCOTLAND: Hogmanay. Traditions include fireworks and torch-lit processions.