Today we celebrate Bake Cookies Day. This day is observed annually on December 18th.
During the holiday we bake a variety of cookies to serve to our family or to give as a gift. People, young and old celebrate this day by baking their favorite cookies and eating them too. Children who believe in Christmas and Santa knows that Santa’s favorite is to eat some cookies with milk whenever he stops to drop off their gifts at midnight.
Anyway, who doesn’t love cookies? Everyone has their own favorite cookie and during this time of the year is when you see all sorts of cookies prepared for everyone to share. What is your favorite cookie?
Cookies are most commonly baked until crisp or just long enough that they remain soft, but some kinds of cookies are not baked at all. Cookies are made in a wide variety of styles, using an array of ingredients including sugars, spices, chocolate, butter, peanut butter, nuts, or dried fruits. The softness of the cookie may depend on how long it is baked.
So today, celebrate this day by gathering your ingredients for baking your holiday cookies. It is not too late you still have a couple of days. Share on social media some recipe of your favorite Christmas cookies using #BakedCookiesDay.
1865 Slavery abolished in America
Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the anti-slavery Republican Party sought not to abolish slavery but merely to stop its extension into new territories and states in the American West. This policy was unacceptable to most Southern politicians, who believed that the growth of free states would turn the U.S. power structure irrevocably against them. In November 1860, Lincoln’s election as president signaled the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, the Civil War began. Four more Southern states joined the Confederacy, while four border slave states in the upper South remained in the Union.
Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, responded cautiously to the call by abolitionists for the emancipation of all American slaves after the outbreak of the Civil War. As the war dragged on, however, the Republican-dominated federal government began to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of slaves would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would, in turn, strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. With 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/slavery-abolished-in-america)
