Converting date time variables in email templates

The email templates have access to variables containing a timestamp value.  These variables actually represent an instance of the Java "Date" class.  While the "Date" class' native encoding meets the needs of Java, yet the same encoding is not very meaningful to humans.  The email template can re-format the value into a wide range of (human readable) settings.  The "SimpleDateFormat" class offers many patterns when xlat-ing a value:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

G     Era designator     Text     AD
y     Year     Year     1996; 96
M     Month in year     Month     July; Jul; 07
w     Week in year     Number     27
W     Week in month     Number     2
D     Day in year     Number     189
d     Day in month     Number     10
F     Day of week in month     Number     2
E     Day in week     Text     Tuesday; Tue
a     Am/pm marker     Text     PM
H     Hour in day (0-23)     Number     0
k     Hour in day (1-24)     Number     24
K     Hour in am/pm (0-11)     Number     0
h     Hour in am/pm (1-12)     Number     12
m     Minute in hour     Number     30
s     Second in minute     Number     55
S     Millisecond     Number     978
z     Time zone     General time zone     Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z     Time zone     RFC 822 time zone     -0800

As an demonstration, the following lines use all pattern letters:
 
$spTools.formatDate($certification.expiration, "G yy yyyy MM MMM w W D d F E a H k K h m s S z Z")

AD 12 2012 04 Apr 14 1 93 2 1 Mon AM 11 11 11 11 56 13 398 CDT -0500