I Like Holidays

[talon]

It's no secret that I like holidays. Secular, religious, silly, real, or made-up. I like them all.

There's Cookie Day, a day filled with religious meaning, community connections, and cookies. Home made or store bought, a cookie is a cookie.

There's Founder's Day, a day of celebrating the fact the Numenism exists, filled with ritual, games, storytelling, community, and food.

There's the whole Yule/Saturnalia/Mithras Day/Festivus/Midwinter/Winter Solstice/Christmas/St. Nickolaus Day/Boxing Day/Kwanzaa/New Year's/ Epiphany blur of holidays, with Hanukkah and the Chinese New Year, and a few other holidays in there, too - an orgy of community, food, friends, and fun. The Christians, of course, burden themselves with the stress of also giving big, extravagant gifts that leave them in debt the rest of the year, but the rest of us just have fun.

As soon as that's over, Mardi Gras season begins with parades and parties, community and food and fun. Mardi Gras stretches from Epiphany to the start of Lent, and many non-Christians join in the fun and festivities. Mmmmm - king cakes!

During Mardi Gras Season, we also get other holidays, like Bacon Day, Burns Night, Valentine's Day, Ground Hog Day, Santa Lucia's Day, Lupercalia, St. Paddy's Day, Brigid's Day, Candlemas, and more.

Since I'm not Christian, I am happy to celebrate holidays that fall during their Lenten Season, and St. Paddy's Day often falls during Lent.

Then there's Easter, Ostara, the Spring Equinox, Walpurgisnacht, May Day, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, July 4th, Yellow Pig Day, Bean Day, Midsummer Day/Summer Solstice, Lammas, Lughnasad, Neptunalia, St. Stephen's Day, Labor Day, St. Martin's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and back into the winter slurry of holy days and festivals.

There are a great many more holidays and holy days and festivals I didn't mention, but they are there, too: Winter Fair, Towel Day, Pi Day, Hat Day, Cherry Blossom Day, Earth Day, April Fool's, Kite Day, Doll's Day, and any number of famous people's birthdays and national freedom/birthdays. Then you add in personal holidays like birthdays, anniversaries, and such and every day holds at least one holy day or festival, and many hold several.

There's no reason to not celebrate any time you feel like it.

Of course, with so very many holy days and festivities happening, it's easy to burn out and go "Ho hum, another holiday, how dull."

This is why we don't celebrate every single holiday available.

In some countries, the people only celebrate their national holidays. Some have only a few, others have more, but few have more than a dozen holidays. Celebrating more than once a month can be exhausting and nerve-wracking because once you have that many holidays, you feel like you're doing nothing but prepping for a holidays or cleaning up after one and the actual celebration gets kind of lost in the haze.

So, much as I love holidays, I concentrate only on a few special ones, ones that means something important to me, and simply have a token toast to all the other holidays. If there's a special food associated with the holiday, I may eat that (bacon on Bacon Day, haggis on Burns Night, king cakes during Mardi Gras, and so on, but that's pretty much it.

Since we live in America, we don't have to celebrate any holidays. We can ignore them all, if we choose, beyond dealing with closed offices and shops. We don't have to erect monumental decorations or even token ones. We can decline the parties and keep our doors shut and porch lights off. We can do this for one holiday or for all of them. Or for none.

I like holidays, so I tend to celebrate more than the "average bear" does.

The holidays I get all deeply involved in are (in no particular order): Thanksgiving, Cookie Day, Mardi Gras, Talk Like a Pirate Day, Flying Spaghetti Monster Day, Founder's Day, Juneteenth, July 4th, Memorial Day, Halloween, and family birthdays. These are the holidays I decorate for and do special things and plan for and have special tablecloths and such for.

Holidays where I do a little something special but don't go out of my way for (ie, holidays I can amuse myself with at work or where I eat special treats, occasionally where I meet up with friends to celebrate): Yellow Pig Day, Pi Day, Bacon Day, Solstices, Equinoxes, Valentine's Day, Lupercalia, Neptunalia, Lammas, Burns Night, New Year's Eve/Day, St. Paddy's Day, Candlemas, Labor Day, Ostara, Easter, maybe a few others.

I have several holidays where I simply watch other people in amazement: Christmas is probably the biggest one, because it has the most angsting and protesting and people trying to rain all over everyone else and all that judgementalism that comes out of it. It is by far the most amusing and terrifying holy day of all of them. There are other holidays where people angst out and protest and do the grinchly thing or try to bully other people in to not celebrating, or even try to pass laws restricting how it can be celebrated, but none have the sheer insanity Christmas engenders. Those other holidays are: St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. If they aren't being dismissed as a disparaging "Hallmark Holiday", they are attacked for being politically incorrect, racist, sexist, or genderist.

Now I'm going to get into a little rant. The people who object to various holidays, instead of grumbling among themselves or keeping it to themselves, feel they have to scream and shout and try to ruin the day for those who do truly believe in them and simply wish to be left alone to celebrate.

I don't quite understand why some people feel so obligated to be so rude and nasty about others celebrating a holiday, pointing out all the (in their opinion) flaws and doing so specifically at the people who are celebrating in the attempt to force them to quit celebrating or to at least be ashamed and unhappy as they celebrate.

If we demand civility in our politics, I think we should also demand civility in our celebrations. If you hate a holiday, just don't celebrate it. If others invite you to share their joy, politely decline, don't go into some spittle-generating rant about how evil it is and how horrible they are to even think about celebrating the occasion. If you had a bad experience, share the pain with close friends who understand, but don't go whining all over the place about how you never got that pony for Christmas therefore Christmas sucks and every who celebrates it is a dream-shattering evil betrayer. My ghods! You're an adult, if you still want the pony sooooooo badly, go out and buy one! Then you'll probably understand why Santa/your parents never gave you one, that or you'll be happy at last. If a loved one died on a holiday, share the grief with close friends and other loved ones, but your personal grief is not a valid reason to go whining all over the place about how you can never find joy in the holiday again because you'll never again get to share it with the dead loved one and the rest of us shouldn't enjoy the holiday either because their life and love is ruined forever. I feel for your loss, I truly do, having lost so many loved ones over the decades. You aren't the only one who's lost a loved one on or near a holiday and we all deal with our grief in our own way - shoving that grief onto others, especially people you barely know or don't know at all, and expecting them to cancel their holiday for you is arrogant beyond belief. Grieving is no reason to lose your manners or to bully others out of their holiday.

Instead of focusing, as so very many people very strangely do, on the negative aspects and down-sides of holidays, practice good manners. If someone wishes you a joyous whatever and you hate the holiday or are grieving, give a polite nod and move on. Politely decline invitations to holiday parties. You really don't have to share your bitterness, anger, condemnation, grief, fears with those outside your circle of intimates. And if you have friends who do love certain holidays, don't you think it's part of the friendship to look the other way and keep your nastiness to yourself so they can enjoy their holiday? Do you think it's an act of friendship to ruin your friend's joy? And conversely, if you're friends with someone who has a specific reason to avoid a holiday, don't invite them to those holiday events in such a way that they feel obligated to attend and them sabotage the celebration. Instead, say something like, "I understand why you don't celebrate (this holiday), but I do. Our friendship transcends holidays, and there will be other events and holidays we can enjoy together. You spend the day as you wish, and I'll wish you peace for that. If you change your mind, you're always welcome to join me."

And then, spend your days celebrating or not, as you wish.

End rant.

I love all holidays, and I know that it hurts to lose a loved one. But their death is not, for me, a valid reason to stop celebrating a holiday. Death is an inevitable part of life. Everything that lives dies. Sometimes they die unexpectedly soon, but they will die. Life goes on, and I know that among my family and friends, they would want those of us still living to continue living, including celebrations and holidays. Death adds a poignancy that makes the holidays even more important to celebrate as those are times when we reach out to the community around us.

Holidays are times to be together.

There are so many holidays, if you don't like one, pick another.

Comments

[eldriwolf]

**Thank You!**
well said

[ariestess]

This is very well said, thanks for that.

And thank you for mentioning Bacon Day. I've never heard of it, but now I'll be doing a little research so I can start celebrating it!