On the Fifth Day of Christmas....

We have Tick Tock Day today, whatever that might be. Presumably it refers to the rapidly waning year -- have you achieved we set out to do in 2012? If not, tick tock, time's running out.

Talk about your pressure-packed observances.

It might be better to celebrate National Pepper Pot Day, as most of the Usual Suspects suggest. The name refers to a thick soup that became popular during the American Revolution when everything available was thrown into the pot. Leading, inexorably, to the question from someone -- go ahead, get it over with: Is that why the soldiers at Valley Forge had no shoes?

On this day in 1170, King Henry II found someone to rid him of that turbulent priest, Thomas à Becket. Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his cathedral on this date 842 years ago.

Canonized a saint in the Catholic and Anglican churches, Becket's murder is remembered in plays by T.S. Eliot ("Murder in the Cathedral") and Jean Anouilh ("Becket"), the latter becoming a motion picture starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.