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What are 6 innovations inspired by origami?
Origami might seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for scientists and engineers, yet its intricate folding patterns are behind six following innovations.
1️⃣Deep-sea grabber that helps scientists to catch delicate deep-sea creatures ⬆️
2️⃣ Bulletproof shield that can be folded into a shape that fits easily into the trunk of a car and protect law enforcement from gunfire ⬆️
3️⃣ Planetary explorer with wheels designed to fold up tight for spaceflight and then swing back into place when the spacecraft reaches its destination ⬆️
4️⃣ Tiny ingestible robots that fold small enough to fit in a pill ⬆️
5️⃣ Star shade that could fold up during launch and then unfurl in space before being positioned in front of a telescope to block starlight and permit detailed observations of exoplanets ⬆️
6️⃣ Artificial muscles that are made of folded “skeletons” encased within fluid-filled sacs and that could power safe for humans “soft” robots ⬆️
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What are the types of calendars?
The motion (or apparent motion) of the Sun and the Moon provide temporal cycles which have strongly influenced the design of most calendars.
Most calendars usually attempt to accord either with the solar cycle (the cycle of the seasons) or with the lunar cycle (the cycle of the phases of the Moon) or with both.
There are over forty calendars currently in use, and many others that have been used or have been invented.
Calendars thus come in many forms and, according to specialists, may be divided into five kinds:
1️⃣ Purely lunar calendars
Those which are based on the natural cycles of the Moon, which have months which attempt to stay as closely as possible in sync with the lunar phases, and whose years (composed of months) have no close relation with the solar cycle. A good example of this type is the Muslim Calendar.
2️⃣ Purely solar calendars
Those which are based on the cycle of the seasons, which results from the motion of the Earth around the Sun (and the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation is tilted significantly with respect to the Earth's plane of rotation about the Sun). These calendars have years, which accord with the seasonal cycle and begin at or near a fixed point in that cycle (for example, the vernal equinox). Years in a purely solar calendar may be composed of months, but the months have little if any connection with the lunar cycle, for example, the the Gregorian Calendar (Common Era Calendar with years designated according to the astronomical system) commonly in use today.
3️⃣ Lunisolar calendars and Solilunar calendars
These calendars aim to be both solar calendars and lunar calendars.
Lunisolar calendars are more successful in tracking the seasonal cycle than the lunar cycle. Such a calendar consists of years which accord closely with the seasonal cycle and months which accord more-or-less closely with the lunar cycle. An example of a lunisolar calendar is the Hindu calendar.
Solilunar calendars are more successful in tracking the lunar cycle than the seasonal cycle. They consist of months which accord closely with the lunar cycle and years which accord more-or-less closely with the seasonal cycle, for example, the Chinese Calendar or the Hebrew Calendar.
Usually solilunar calendars and lunisolar calendars are regarded as forming a single class: 'lunisolar calendars'.
4️⃣ Lunistellar calendars
Some experts suggested that a classification of calendars should also include the category of 'lunistellar'. The Egyptian Calendar is considered to be such a calendar.
5️⃣ Other calendars
Some calendars apparently make little or no attempt to accord with the cycles of the Moon or of the Sun. For example, the Tzolkin and the Long Count in the Maya Calendar. Some of these calendars may accord with other astronomical cycles, such as that associated with the planet Venus.
What calendars have 13 months?
Two traditional calendars of Africa have 13 months.
The Coptic calendar, also called the Alexandrian calendar, help orthodox Copts worldwide to determine the dates of religious holidays and rituals. It derived from the ancient Egyptian calendar and is still officially used in 🇪🇬Egypt.
It is divided into 13 months. The first 12 months have 30 days. The last month, called Pi Kogi Enavot or Nasie and referred to as an epagomenal month, has 5 days in a common year and 6 days in a leap year.
Year 1 in the Coptic c. started on August 29, 284 in the Julian c.
It is one the oldest calendar system still in use.
The Ethiopian calendar has the same system of the calculation of 13 months as the Coptic calendar.
The main difference is the calculation of the date of the birth of Jesus - the Ethiopian c. is 7 to 8 years behind the Gregorian c.
The main calendar in 🇪🇹Ethiopia, it is also used by the Orthodox Tewahido Church in 🇪🇷Eritrea.
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What calendar is used by Muslims?
☪️📆The Hijri calendar or the Muslim/Islamic calendar is used by Muslims around the world to determine the dates of religious events and observances.
🌕Its time reckoning is tied to the Moon phases. Each month lasts for a full lunation, the time span from one New Moon to the next.
📌It has 12 months with 29 or 30 days. The months of Rajab, Dhū al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Ḥijjah, and Muḥarram are considered sacred.
📌This calendar is completely detached from astronomical seasons. So, an Islamic year is about 11 days shorter of the solar year and for practical reasons most Muslim countries officially use the Gregorian calendar.
🕛Islamic time reckoning begins in 622 CE when the Muslim prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina. This event is referred to as Hegira or Hijrah.
ℹ️Since the Islamic calendar years are shorter than Gregorian years and the current year number is lower, the year numbers of the two calendar systems will coincide on May 1, 20874 CE/AH.
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What is the Hindu calendar?
The Hindu calendar, also called Panchanga, was developed in ancient times on the Indian subcontinent. The earliest mentions of Hindu time reckoning can be found in the Vedas, a body of sacred texts of Hinduism, some of which date back to around 1200 BCE.
It offers a multi-dimensional method of structuring time, combining information about lunar and solar days/months, the movements of the Sun and the Moon in relation to stellar constellations, and other astronomically defined time spans.
In fact, there is not one single Hindu calendar, and there are many regional variations of it.
🇮🇳🇮🇩 The Saka Samvat is used officially in India since 1957 and by Hindus in Java and Bali. It starts from 78 AD and is based on the tropical zodiac signs rather than the sidereal year - the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun.
🇳🇵🇮🇳 The Vikram Samvat is used in Nepal and some Indian states, starts from 57 BC and uses lunar months and the sidereal year.
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Why did the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian calendar?
The Julian calendar was the predecessor of the Gregorian calendar.
The Julian calendar was proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar, took effect on 1 January 45 BC and was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria. It had 365 days divided into 12 months but it did not correctly reflect the actual time it takes the Earth to circle once around the Sun.
In the Julian calendar, a leap day was added every four years, which is too frequent, and progressively important religious holidays were out of sync with the fixed dates for astronomical events.
The introduction of the Gregorian calendar allowed for the realignment with events like equinoxes and solstices.
Because of this error of the Julian calendar, a number of days had to be dropped when the Gregorian calendar was adopted ⬆️.
The gap between these two calendar systems will increase to 14 days in the year 2100.
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What is the oldest calendar still in use?
The Jewish calendar, derived from the ancient Hebrew calendar, has remained unchanged since about AD 900.
It is the official calendar of the modern state of Israel and is used by the Jewish people throughout the world as a religious calendar.
The starting point of Hebrew chronology is the year 3761 BC, the date the World was created according to the Old Testament.
The Jewish calendar is luni-solar, based on lunar months of 29 days alternating with 30 days. An extra month is intercalated every 3 years, based on a 19-year cycle.
It’s interesting to note that, while many Jews outside of Israel have adopted the Gregorian calendar, they do not generally use the abbreviations A.D. and B.C. related to Christianity. Because Jews do not believe that Jesus is Lord, dates of the Jewish calendar are designated AM (Latin anno mundi, "the year of the world"), C.E. (Common or Christian Era), and BCE (before the Common Era).
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What is the world’s oldest calendar?
🏴 In 2013, archeologists announced the discovery at Warren Field in Scotland ⬆️ of what they claim as the world’s oldest calendar – a series of 12 large pits that were designed to mimic the various phases of the moon and aligned perfectly on the midwinter solstice in a way that would have helped the Mesolithic hunter-gathers keep accurate track of the passage of the seasons and the lunar cycle.
At nearly 10,000 years old, these pits are pre-dating by several thousand years the Bronze Age monuments in Mesopotamia.
The geophysical evidence suggests the pits had been periodically reshaped until at last the calendar-monument seemed to fall out of use around 4,000 years ago.
First discovered by aerial photography in 2004, their significance was recognized only 10 years later, using the latest-generation remote-sensing technology and software that worked out the positions of sunrises and sunsets in the landscape 10,000 years ago.
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What is astrology and is it a science?
Astrology can be defined as the study of the connection between celestial activity phenomena and earthly events.
In some context astrology is also described as the primitive study of celestial bodies, which formed the basis of astronomy and began with the ancient civilizations.
Those who practice astrology are called astrologers.
Astrology maintains that each person is born under a particular sign of the zodiac.
Some divide astrology in 3️⃣ branches:
🟢 Mundane A. (predictions about national and international affairs)
🔵 Interrogatory A. (predictions about subject’s life)
🟣 Natal A. (predictions based on the date of a person’s birth)
Even though astrologers use mathematics and astronomy to make their calculations, there is no evidence that astrological predictions are accurate and thus astrology is a pseudoscience.
ℹ️ A pseudoscience is a field that pretends to use scientific methodology, but does not follow the scientific method.
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Who were the first great astronomers?
Astronomical observation begins with the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, where prominent constellations are recognized and named soon after 3000 BC.
Babylonians
The sky-watchers of Mesopotamia identify the five wandering stars, which with the sun and moon form the seven original 'planets' (Greek for 'wanderers').
Within Mesopotamia the Babylonians, flourishing from the 18th century BC, are considered to be the first great astronomers. The minutes and seconds of modern astronomical measurement derive from their number system.
Greeks
From the 6th century BC the Greeks make significant advances in astronomy: their analytical approach to the heavens leads to early insights of great brilliance.
They are first to produce an astronomical theory in which a circular earth revolves on its own axis as well as moving in an orbit. The theory derives in part from the need to locate the great fire which they believe fuels the universe.
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What are two big space breakthroughs of 2022?
Closest black hole ⚫️
By sifting through data released by the Gaia spacecraft, astrophysicists discovered in 2022 a black hole that’s just over 1,560 light-years from Earth. Dubbed Gaia BH1, it’s about twice as close as the previously nearest known black hole.
But that record may not stand, as about 100 million black holes are predicted to exist in the Milky Way and even closer black holes may turn up in the next years.
The Space Innovation of the Year 🔭
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the giant infrared instrument now parked a million km from Earth, was named the Innovation of the Year.
Its first images were finally presented in July, revealing an unprecedentedly detailed view of the cosmos, “the deepest view of the universe ever” according to specialists.
The telescope is working through a long list of planned observations, exploring everything from the oldest galaxies to the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
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What are two amazing medical discoveries of 2022?
Earliest surgery
After investigating the skeleton of a person who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo about 31,000 years ago researchers found out that the first known surgical operation was a leg amputation ⬆️. Healed bone where the lower left leg had been removed suggests the individual survived for several years after the procedure. The discovery pushes surgery’s origin back by some 20,000 years.
Resurrecting dying organs
Yale scientists succeeded in reviving cells in the hearts, liver, kidneys, and brains of pigs that had been lying dead in a lab for an hour. The researchers used a device much like a heart-lung machine to pump a custom-made solution, dubbed OrganEx, into the pigs' bodies ⬆️. The pigs' hearts started beating. The pigs weren't revived, but the technology might be useful for human transplantation and in limiting damage to hearts from heart attacks, and to brains from strokes.
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What is an equinox?
There are only 2️⃣ times of the year when the Earth's axis is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun, resulting in a "nearly" equal amount of daylight and darkness at all latitudes.
These are Equinoxes ⬆️ (in 2013 and 2014) .
The name is derived from 2️⃣ Latin words - aequus (equal) and nox (night).
At the equator, the sun is directly overhead at noon on these events.
The "nearly" equal hours of day and night are due to refraction of sunlight or a bending of the light's rays that causes the sun to appear above the horizon when the actual position of the sun is below the horizon.
Additionally, the days become a little longer at the higher latitudes because it takes the sun longer to rise and set.
On the equinox and for several days before and after it, the length of day will range from about 12 hours and six and one-half minutes at the equator, to 12 hours and 8 minutes at 30 degrees latitude, to 12 hours and 16 minutes at 60 degrees latitude.
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What is Origami?
Origami art is the traditional Japanese craft of folding a sheet of paper into objects and figures. Ori translates as “folded” and kami means “paper”.
Paper was introduced to Japan in the 6th century. At that time, the practice of paper folding emerged as a ceremonial Shinto ritual. It was not until Japan's Edo Period (1603 – 1868) that origami also became a leisurely activity and an art form.
Any paper, of any size, can be used for making origami. The origami sheets are typically prepackaged and sold in 6- or 7-inch (15.5- or 17.8-cm) squares. As a rule, each sheet is colored or decoratively patterned on one side and solid white on the other. Sometimes, this contrast is critical to a folded figure’s design.
Of the thousands of recorded sculptural art forms made by folding paper, as much as 95% of them start as a perfect square.
The iconic figure of origami paper art is the bird, and the undisputed masterpiece is the flying crane.
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What is a calendar that consists of three separate calendars?
it is the Mayan Calendar, that consists of three separate corresponding calendars: the Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar), and the Haab (civil calendar). Each of them is cyclical, meaning that a certain number of days must occur before a new cycle can begin.
Being used simultaneously,
📍the Tzolkin and the Haab identify the days, but not the years
📍the Long Count date comes first, then the Tzolkin date, and last the Haab date.
A typical Mayan date would read: 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Kumku.
A date is specified by its position in both the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars. This creates a total of 18,980 unique date combinations, which are used to identify each day within a cycle lasting about 52 years. This period is called the Calendar Round.
The Mayan c. is still in use in some Mayan communities. It dates back to the 5th century BCE, but the same system was also used by other indigenous peoples of America.
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What is one of the world's most accurate calendar systems?
The Gregorian calendar deviates from the solar year by 1 day in 3236 years.
The Solar Hijri calendar, also known as Persian Calendar, Iranian Calendar, and SH Calendar, used in 🇮🇷Iran and 🇦🇫Afghanistan, is more accurate.
A year in this observational calendar has 12 months. The first 6 months have 31 days, and months 7 through 11 have 30 days. The last month, Esfand, has 29 days in a common year and 30 days in a leap year.
One of complex mathematical rules that determine the distribution of leap years in it achieves a degree of accuracy very similar to that of the observational version, requiring about 110,000 years to accumulate an error of 1 day.
Its first version, the Jalali calendar, was developed in the 11th century by astronomers including the Persian scientist Omar Khayyam.
Although the Solar Hijri calendar shares this start date with the Islamic Hijri calendar, the calendar systems are not related otherwise.
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What is the traditional Chinese calendar?
Although modern-day China 🇨🇳 relies on the Gregorian calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar still governs the dates of important holidays such as the Chinese Lantern Festival, and is used to select auspicious dates for weddings, funerals, moving, and starting businesses.
This calendar’s origins can be traced as far back as the 14th century BCE.
It has 12 months of 29 or 30 days that each begin on the first day of a new moon. Leap months, rather than days, are added as needed.
Each month can be referred to by an animal name or a number within each 60-year cycle, which also correspond to particular hours of the day, as well as years in the zodiac cycle. This pattern dates back about 2000 years.
In order of occurrence, the animals are
🐀
🐂
🐅
🐇
🐉
🐍
🐎
🐑
🐒
🐓
🐕
🐖
🇰🇵🇰🇷🇻🇳🇯🇵 Variations of the traditional Chinese calendar are used in Korea, Vietnam and the Ryukyu Islands.
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Who first introduced a leap day and a 24-hour day?
🔺 Ancient Egyptians were the first to realise the need for a leap day. They discovered that the star Sirius lined up with the rising sun around the time of flooding every year and also noticed that Sirius lined up with the sun for about six hours (a ¼ a day) different every year. They inserted a leap day into their calendar for a while but then abandoned it.
🔺 They also invented the 24-hour day, divided into two cycles of 12 hours each, and helped pioneer the concept of time as an entity.
🔺 In the ancient Egyptian calendar, the year had 365 days and consisted of 3 seasons: Akhet (Flood), Peret (Emergence) and Shomu (Summer), plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside the year proper. Each season included 4 months of 30 days.
🔺 According to scientists, the ancient Egyptian calendar was highly accurate, a miracle of its time and contributed to the development of different ancient calendars.
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What is the most widely used civil calendar in the world?
❗️📆 The Gregorian Calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today.
It was first introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
It has a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths.
11 of the months have either 30 or 31 days, while the second month, February, has only 28 days during the common year. However, nearly every four years is a leap year, when one extra—or intercalary—day, is added on 29 February, making the leap year in the Gregorian calendar 366 days long.
The days of the year in the Gregorian calendar are divided into 7-day weeks, and the weeks are numbered 1 to 52 or 53.
ℹ️ Although the Gregorian calendar is named after Pope Gregory XIII, it is an adaptation of a calendar designed by Luigi Lilio, also known as Aloysius Lilius (1510-1576), who was an Italian doctor, astronomer, and philosopher. He died six years before his calendar was officially introduced.
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Who used the first written calendars?
Man's interest in the sky is at the heart of three separate stories - astronomy, astrology and the calendar.
So, it’s not surprising that the Babylonians, who seemed to be the first great astronomers, began to use the first written calendars in the ancient cities between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Clay tablets marked by cuneiform writing indicate that those Babylonian cities would have had their own calendars with their own names for the months of the year.
All cities had a month called, “Extra,” allowing them to reset the calendar in the same way as a leap year.
Each Babylonian week lasted seven days. Each seventh day was a rest day on which officials were prohibited from engaging in certain activities that couldn’t be done on the 28th day of each month, either.
Perhaps the strangest aspect - during the lunar cycle, the Babylonian month, lasting 29 or 30 days, made it so the last week of each month lasted eight or nine days.
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What is calendar?
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes.
This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years.
A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system.
Periods in a calendar are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon.
Many civilizations have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs.
🗓 A calendar is also a physical device. This is the most common usage of the word.
📱💻 Other similar types of calendars can include computerized systems, which can be set to remind the user of upcoming events and appointments.
📝 A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar.
The English word calendar is derived from the Latin word ‘kalendae’, the Latin name of the first day of every month.
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What is the zodiac?
The zodiac is the line on the celestial sphere (the full pattern of stars as seen in the night sky) along which the sun seems to move during a full year. The position of the sun on any day can be discovered by observing which stars are just above the horizon at the point where the sun is about to rise or has recently set. They will be the same group of stars at the beginning or end of the same day, even though appearing in the east at dawn and in the west at dusk - for the sun's position in relation to the stars, as seen from earth, hardly changes within a day.
The concept of the zodiac was introduced by the Babylonians who realized that the zodiac can serve as a yardstick of celestial time if divided into recognizable and equal segments. They selected twelve constellations to represent these segments and gave them the names of animals.
The Greeks later provided the term for the zodiac when they describe it as the 'animal circle' (zodiakos kyklos).
In succession these constellations are ⬇️
♈️ Aries (the Ram)
♉️ Taurus (Bull)
♊️ Gemini (Twins)
♋️ Cancer (Crab)
♌️ Leo (Lion)
♍️ Virgo (Virgin)
♎️ Libra (Scales)
♏️ Scorpio (Scorpion)
♐️ Sagittarius (Archer)
♑️ Capricornus (Goat)
♒️ Aquarius (Water Carrier)
♓️ Pisces (Fishes)
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What is astronomy?
✔️ Astronomy is the study of the universe, the celestial objects that make up the universe, and the processes that govern the lifecycle of those objects.
🔭 Astronomy is largely an observational science. Astronomers use the electromagnetic radiation emitted from stars and other celestial objects, which can include visible light, UV, infrared, and X-rays. Because the light from these objects is the primary means to study them, one of the most important tools for an astronomer is the telescope.
♾ Given the size of the universe (which could be infinite), astronomy is an enormous field.
🌠🌌The celestial objects that astronomers study include stars, galaxies, nebulae, and supernova.
🔙 Because of the enormous distances between Earth and other objects, when astronomers look farther away, they are also looking back in time. This is because of the amount of time it takes the light we see to travel from the source to us here on Earth.
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What are new details of the dino-killing impact discovered in 2022?
The impact that ended the age of 🦖🦕 some 66 million years ago was the worst single day for the life on Earth.
A 6.5-mile-wide asteroid called Chicxulub slammed into the waters off what is now Mexico, triggering a mass extinction that killed off more than 75 % of Earth’s species!
📌In 2022, researchers were studying a set of fossil fish that died in the blast and concluded the asteroid struck during spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
📌They provided another glimpse of the asteroid’s devastation: Within minutes of the impact, rocks that formed in the extreme temperatures rained down more than a thousand miles from the crater’s center.
📌Scientists also announced that they had found signs of another possible undersea crater off the coast of West Africa that is about the same age as Chicxulub—perhaps evidence that a fragment of the incoming asteroid broke off and smashed into Earth separately.
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What are some record-breaking biological discoveries of 2022?
Biggest single-celled bacterium
Averaging about a centimeter long and visible to the naked eye, Thiomargarita magnifica, is a newfound bacterium, which lives in the mangrove forests of the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles, is about 50 times larger than other species of big bacteria and about 5,000 times larger than typical bacteria. Why this species evolved into such a giant is unknown.
Largest fish colony 🐟
Deep off the coast of Antarctica, a breeding colony of some 60 million nests of Jonah’s icefish (Neopagetopsis ionah) is stretching across at least 240 square kilometers of seafloor.
The world's smallest new snail species 🐌
In Southeast Asia, scientists discovered two new snail species, smaller than any seen before. They dubbed the smallest one, measuring only 0.6 millimeters in diameter, Angustopila psammion, as “psammion” derives from the ancient Greek word for “grain of sand.”
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Why does each season start twice?
📌 Seasons are defined in two ways: astronomical seasons, which are based on Earth’s position as it rotates around the Sun, and meteorological seasons, which are based on annual temperature cycles. Both divide the year into spring, summer, autumn, and winter—yet with slightly different start and end dates for each.
📌 In the past people marked astronomical seasons with different calendars, but now, the start of each astronomical season is marked by either an equinox or a solstice.
This method of measuring the seasons, however, presents some challenges.
The solar year is approximately 365.2422 Earth days long, making it impossible for any calendar to perfectly sync with Earth’s rotation around the sun. As a result, astronomical seasons start on slightly different days and times each year—making it difficult to keep the climate statistics that are used in agriculture, commerce, and more.
📌 That’s why weather forecasters and climatologists turned to meteorological seasons instead.
Meteorological seasons are far simpler than astronomical seasons. They divide the calendar year into four seasons that each last exactly three months and are based on the annual temperature cycle. Winter takes place during the coldest three months of the year, summer in the hottest three months, and spring and fall mark the remaining transition months.
In the Northern Hemisphere, that means the start date for each season is March 1 (spring), June 1 (summer), September 1 (fall), and December 1 (winter). In the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are reversed; spring begins in September, summer in December, fall in March, and winter in June.
The consistency of meteorological seasons allows meteorologists to make the complex statistical calculations necessary to make predictions and compare seasons to one another.
ℹ️ So the first day of each meteorological season is respectively March 1, June 1, September 1, and December 1 while each astronomical season starts respectively with the first equinox around March 21, the first solstice between June 20-22, the second equinox around September 22, and the second solstice between December 20-23.
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What is a solstice?
The solstice (combining the Latin words sol for “Sun” and sistere for “To Stand Still”) is the point where the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest point in the sky for the year.
On our planet, solstices are twice-yearly phenomena defined by solar declination.
During the June solstice (marked between June 20-22), solar declination is about 23.5°N (the Tropic of Cancer). It is the longest day of the year with the maximum intensity of the sun’s rays and the most hours of sunlight.|
During the December solstice (marked between December 20-23), solar declination is about 23.5°S (the Tropic of Capricorn). It is the shortest day of the year and has the fewest hours of daylight.
Solstices are marked by various celebrations that go back generations the most well known of which is the Christmas holiday celebrated a few days after the December Solstice which borrows many of its traditions from earlier pagan traditions.
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