7 Ιανουαριου

Happy Christmas to all our readers celebrating Christmas Day today, the 25th of December according to the Julian calendar (used prior to the Gregorian calendar).

The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the older Julian calendar to determine when to celebrate the birth of Jesus. However, the Orthodox Church in many countries, including America, Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece and Romania switched to what is known as the "Revised Julian Calendar" in the early 20th century which is basically the same as the Gregorian calendar. Hence, Orthodox Christmas day in these countries is on December 25th rather than the 7th of January.

Ukraine recognised 25th December as Christmas Day in 2017 with the day becoming an official government holiday but many Ukrainians still celebrate Christmas today, and the 7th of January is also a public holiday.

The confusion over when Christmas Day actually falls would seem to be something of an excuse to celebrate twice so we'll be enjoying a suitably vodka-based Christmas Cosmopolitan, one of our 20 best Christmas cocktails.

It's Christian Louboutin's birthday

The people we attributed cocktails to on these pages tend to be great composers, artists and scientists...so it might come as a surprise that we're honouring a shoe designer today, but Mr Louboutin is a man whose shoe artistry has reduced women to tears.

The shoes' trademark red-lacquered soles and killer heels are the thing of dreams. With the post-Christmas financial drought, now mightn't be the best time to invest in a pair, but don't despair - why not make a Stiletto cocktail instead to cheer yourself up, and toast the future and many Christian Loboutins to come.

The anniversary of the H-Bomb

Happy Birthday to the H-bomb, or the thermonuclear weapon, which made its formal debut on the world stage this day in 1953 when President Truman announced the U.S. had developed the weapon as part of his final State of the Union address.

Truman's latest blow in the Cold War was, indeed, a bomb that could reach temperatures of 50 million degrees Fahrenheit, and inflict exponentially more destruction than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Back in the day, of course, there were only two sides in the nuclear arms race: Communist and capitalist (or "free"). Today the picture is rather more blurred, with Pakistan poised to overtake the UK as the world's fifth most-nuked-up nation. Calm your nerves with a Bomber.