December 8 Holidays

Feast of the Immaculate Conception marks December 8, 1854, when Pope Pius IX defined the dogma that Mary was conceived without original sin — a public holiday in more than 30 countries including Spain, Italy, Portugal, and most of Latin America. Bodhi Day is the Buddhist holiday celebrating the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India — observed by Zen and Pure Land Buddhists on December 8, the date traditionally calculated for his enlightenment. National Brownie Day celebrates the chocolate brownie — commissioned in 1893 by Bertha Palmer of the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, who asked her pastry chef to create a dessert smaller than a cake that could be eaten without utensils at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Mother’s Day in Panama is a Panamanian national holiday on December 8 — observed on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as the Virgin Mary is venerated as the ideal of motherhood.