Ginger and Strawberries

When I was pregnant, I was hoping that at least one of the girls would have red hair. Dave and his brother both had really red hair as kids and it is my family a little; well, we got lucky!

So I don't know when people started calling red-heads "gingers" but I hear it all the time out here! So I ponder... I eat ginger, and its not red! But then I realize well maybe it came from Gilligan's Island Ginger?

So with Google at my fingertips I decided I should find out a little more about the term "Ginger" as applied to red-heads and I found a lot of good info not only about the name Ginger, but about red-heads in general.

• Only 1-2% of all humans have natural red hair, making it the most rare
• It appears in people with 2 copies of the recessive gene (on Chromosome 16 in case you were wondering)
• Red heads are commonly fair-skinned, have light eyes, and are more likely to have freckles
• If they have fair skin, they are able to absorb Vitamin D at low light levels- which is why they burn when they get too much sun- they don't need it!
• In history, people with red hair were believed to have fiery tempers and sharp tongues
• People over time have been fascinated and frightened by it (women with red hair were thought to be witches)
• And finally Gingers: Ginger was first used to refer to someone with red hair in 1525 (according the the English Oxford Dictionary) and meant someone with reddish-yellow hair. So really referring to the Strawberry blonde end of the spectrum.

So there is a logical explanation after all, not only for the term ginger but how red-heads come to be: 2 recessive genes colliding creating a low incidence of the pigment eumelanin along with the presence of the pigment pheomelanin. (huh.... straight from Wikipedia btw)

And it's not because they are witches, fiery, temperamental, or possessed- as some myths portray... whew:)

So when people see them its:

"Ginger", "Strawberry Blonde", straight up "red"... and of course it's always "who did they get that from?!" Their Daddy of course!

The color is especially bright in the sunlight; I get more and more excited as their hair grows into their cute ginger locks- love it!