A Few Facts About Red Heads

We always seem to get around to taking a picture of me and the kids for Mother's Day, a week late. So true to form, here we are just before we jumped into the car to go to a special Stake Conference for church. We got a new stake presidency.
The kids all have bright red cheeks from a weekend of playing outside.

A small word to the wise. Do not wear a white dress and then try to eat a buttered blueberry muffin in the car because you did not get a chance to grab anything else in the midst of getting the kids ready. It will inevitably lead to either a blue, or a butter stain on the front of the dress. Possibly both. Dang!

Okay,
Look at Georgia in this picture! Ha Ha!! Could she come up with a more scathing look at her brother if she tried? I laughed so hard when I saw this photo in my camera! She was telling Will to smile at the camera. Will was not having it on this particular morning. He was doing the "look at the camera with your eyes half closed and mouth hanging open" thing. Georgia was only too happy to instruct him to do otherwise.

I don't know if she is more or less fiery than any other little girl, or redhead, because she is the only one of both those categories that I have. But I will say that pretty much nothing gets past this girl in our house. She is a one woman, redheaded patrol.
Georgia also gets FAR more attention from the general public than any of my other kids. It is pretty safe to say that we cannot go anywhere without getting at least one comment on her hair color, how pretty she is, or how rare her look is.  We are asked what her name is by people all of the time. They are curious about her. When they hear her less than common, old fashioned name, it takes the attention to a new level!
I totally get it, because now that I have a redhead, when I see a girl or woman while I am out with Georgia's coloring, I am drawn to her, and usually find a way to ask her about her hair. Especially the teenage girls. And usually only if they have the exact strawberry red, blonde, gold mix that Georgia has, because that is what I am dealing with. They are so pretty to me!

Del's family is very familiar with all of this because Georgia has so many redheaded cousins. We all have so many stories about the extra attention that comes with this hair color!
There are plenty of red tones running in my family line too. My great grandma was a red head. I wonder sometimes if she was anything like my Georgia.

Georgia is very sensitive to this right now, usually ducking her head. But I think that she actually enjoys the attention. I hope she does, because she has been forced to make a promise to me that I will never hear of her buying a box dye with her teenage friends and going for it in someones bathroom! Her hair must remain uncorrupted!
I remember when she was a baby and had barley a sign of eyelashes, I would angle her this way and that in my arms to catch the light on them. They looked like they may be red! I was so excited!

I happened upon a list of facts about red heads this week. I found them entertaining, and some of them made me kind of sad, because I could not love my daughter's hair color more.

You can decide for yourself how the red heads in your life live up to a few of them!

Facts About Reheads:

-Less than 4 percent of the world's population has red hair. Only 2% of the U.S. population is a red.

-The gene for red hair is called MC1R on Chromosome 16. This gene must be carried by both parents in order to produce a red head. The gene is a mutation and can show up after generations of darker hair.

-Red hair with blue eyes is the rarest genetic combination on Earth. Red hair with green or brown eyes is more common. (Hello Georgia!)

-Red heads often require up to as much as 20% more anesthesia, and have been known to wake up during surgery if they do not have a strong enough dosage.

-Those with naturally red hair do not go grey as they age. Red heads keep their pigment longer in life than any other color, before fading and turning white.

-Red heads have been picked on through out history. Guidelines for witch hunting in almost all time periods suggested that those with red hair were of the devil. Girls with red hair were often burned, or buried alive in both ancient Egypt and Medieval times as a way to try to halt the coloring from spreading.

-Scholars note that redheads have influenced history out of proportion to their numbers. Famous redheads include, Roman emperor Nero, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, the ancient gold of love Aphrodite, Queen Elizabeth I, Napoleon Bonaparte, Oliver Cromwell, Emily Dickinson, Antonio Vivaldi, Thomas Jefferson, Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Twain, James Royce, Winston Chruchill, Brigham Young, Christopher Colombus, Malcom X, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, Galileo, King David, and I have heard George Washington powdered his red hair white.

- Throughout history Satan is often portrayed as a redhead.

-As recently as 2001, red hair has had an effect on a judges sentencing of a criminal in Ireland, as he believed red heads to be of a bad temper.

-Michelangelo portrayed Eve as a brunette before being expelled from the Garden of Eden, and a redhead after being driven out.

-In Denmark it is a high mark of honor for parents to have a red head. (Good thing the majority of our ancestry is Danish!

-Redheads have been depicted as unlucky. Judas is portrayed as a redhead, proving an early prejudice.

-Redheads have the thickest hair, but the fewest strands.

-Redheads are stung by bees more than those with other hair colors.

There are a few things you may not have known about those "fiery" headed people in your life. I know that we love having the red variety of hair around here! I think history may just have it exactly wrong! So far red has been nothing but a lucky hair color in our lives!