The date object returns the current date.
In FreeMarker there is no such variable as today. Therefore, the current date (as a new Date() Java object) is provided in all templates as the date object in the root of the model.
Example
The following code snippet shows an example of use:
<#assign datetimeformat="EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz">
${date?string(datetimeformat)}