I hope you’re having a wonderful first day of the year. Just wanted to take a moment and officially welcome the month of January.

A few things that you may or may not know about January are:

• Has 31 days
• It is, on average, the coldest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of winter) and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of summer).
• January starts on the same day of the week as October in common years, and starts on the same day of the week as April and July in leap years. In a common year, January ends on the same day of the week as February and October, and ends on the same day of the week as July in a leap year.
• January is named after Janus, the god of the doorway; the name has its beginnings in Roman mythology, coming from the Latin word for door since January is the door to the year.
• January’s birthstone is the garnet which represents constancy.
• Its birth flower is the cottage pink Dianthus caryophyllus or galanthus.
• The Chinese floral emblem of January is the Prunus mume.
• The Japanese floral emblem of January is the camellia.
• The Zodiac Signs for the month of January are Capricorn (until January 19) and Aquarius (January 20 onwards).

Holidays in January:

• New Year’s Day – January 1
• Independence Day in Haiti – January 1
• Handsel Monday in Scotland and northern England – First Monday
• Three Wise Men Day, or Epiphany, in Latin America, Spain, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, and is, although not celebrated as widely or in the same way as in countries with a Spanish history, an official holiday in many European countries, for example Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Liechtenstein, Slovakia and Croatia, as well as in parts of Germany and Switzerland.  – January 6
• Russian and Ukrainian Christmas Eve, also known as Svyat Vechir – January 6
• Coptic and Russian Orthodox Church Christmas – January 7
• Plough Sunday in Scotland and northern England – Sunday after January 6
• Coming of Age Day in Japan – Second Monday
• National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the United States – January 11
• Feast of the Santo Niño in the Philippines – *Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States – Third Monday
• Third Sunday is Pongal in India.
• Republic Day in India – January 26
• Australia Day in Australia – January 26
• Makara Sankranthi (Festival of Harvest) in India – January 14
• Auckland Anniversary in Auckland, New Zealand – Monday closest to January 29
• Burns night in Scotland – January 25
• The uniting of Moldavia and Wallachia under the same ruler in 1859, Romania – January 24
• National Thank You month

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Just because the Holidays are technically over in the States, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a reason to celebrate world wide.