{"id":178403,"date":"2026-01-16T14:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=178403"},"modified":"2026-01-16T14:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:56:22","slug":"weekend-open-thread-582","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=178403","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Open Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-178404\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?resize=333%2C333&amp;ssl=1 333w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mardi-Gras-celebration-20250103-B.jpg?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>January 6 to February 17 is 2026&#8217;s Carnival\/Mari Gras season. After the 12 days of Christmas comes the days of Epiphany. Officially, those days end on the first Sunday after January 6. Informally, the season runs from the 6th through Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. The King Cake replaces the Christmas Cake for this season; however, whoever finds the &#8220;baby Jesus&#8221; in their slice is up to purchase the next King Cake. <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Enjoy your weekend!\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>January 6 to February 17 is 2026&#8217;s Carnival\/Mari Gras season. After the 12 days of Christmas comes the days of Epiphany. Officially, those days end on the first Sunday after January 6. Informally, the season runs from the 6th through Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. The King Cake replaces the Christmas Cake for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-Kpt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}