Tag Archives: holiday

Silly Season Holiday Edition

So just another brief rant about artificial holidays, but this one is definitely an artifact by marketers. The geek in me should rejoice in Star Wars Day, but the pragmatist just can’t achieve buy in. Too campy, too contrived.

Ill, I am. Sick, it makes me. (Channeling my inner Yoda)

Sweetest Day, Secretaries’ Day, and Grandparent’s Day were bad enough. Artificial celebrations created specifically to generate additional revenue. How many people took the day off work to do a movie marathon watching them all? Maybe 6 or 7?

You could make a similar argument for Pi Day in March, and you would be right. Except for the point Pie day is a once in a millennium  occurrence. When the next one comes around, You, your children, grand children, and their descendants of several generations will have come and gone. I think there is no way NOT to celebrate such a rare event with at least a nod to its propriety.

And it continues tomorrow. I have to go out and get chips and salsa for the party tomorrow, though I still don’t understand.

Why American recognizes the importance of a sink full of mayo…

Phred

post 62 of n

Cross Your Ladders And Knock On A Black Cat

Friday was the second thirteenth of the year (yes, this post is late. It’s my fault I have been sick and the official “blame someone else day” occurs on the FIRST FTT of the year) and for many people it is a day of consternation and concern. Stevie Wonder music not withstanding, many (perhaps most) people manifest symptoms of superstition.

It is the season of beards (hockey playoffs start shortly) and “lucky socks” (and other articles of clothing). March Madness brackets are out so there are thousands of supporters performing the magical actions needed to insure their team is victorious. Players slap the appropriate spot on the trip from the locker room to the field, cryptic incantations invoke the proper deities of the opposing teams for good and for evil. Scantily clad supplicants gyrate before the masses to build up the required frenzy for the coming slaughter…er, game.

Triskaidekaphobics have their own cause for concern. Just surviving the day will be challenging enough. And November has that whole election thing disrupting their lives, not just the usual Friday fright. Broken mirrors, ominous odors and malevolent observations cascading together to bring horror to the susceptible.

What many (perhaps most) fail to understand is that because events occur in sequence does not necessarily mean they are related in a causal relationship. If the sun rises on the same day you are involved in a car accident, it is (probably) not reasonable to assert the sunrise caused the accident (especially if it happened on the way home near midnight). Cause and effect is vastly more difficult to connect than simply observing my team wins more often if I neglect to brush my teeth on game days. (Both events might occur concurrently, but it is unreasonable to assert causality!)  There has to be a reason.

“Do you know,” said Prak, “the story of the Reason?”
Arthur said that he didn’t, and Prak said that he knew that he didn’t
He told it.
One night, he said, a spaceship appeared in the sky of a planet which had never seen one before. The planet was Dalforsas, the ship was this one. It appeared as a brilliant new star moving silently across the heavens.
Primitive tribesmen who were sitting huddled on the Cold Hillsides looked up from their steaming night-drinks and pointed with trembling fingers, swearing that they had seen a sign, a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise at last and go and slay the evil Princes of the Plains.
In the high turrets of their palaces, the Princes of the Plains looked up and saw the shining star, and received it unmistakably as a sign from their gods that they must now go and set about the accursed Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides.
And between them, the Dwellers in the Forest looked up into the sky and saw the sigh of the new star, and saw it with fear and apprehension, for though they had never seen anything like it before, they too knew precisely what it foreshadowed, and they bowed their heads in despair.
They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When the winds fell, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing – that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
This in itself wouldn’t be so bad, except that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides always elected to beat the hell out of each other in the Forest, and it was always the Dwellers in the Forest who came off worst in these exchanges, though as far as they could see it never had anything to do with them.
      Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything, Chapter 34

Many (perhaps most) should know better. Especially with the explosion of information and technology, we should be beyond whistling in the dark to keep evil away, pronouncing blessing after a sneeze to prevent the person’s soul from escaping, and performing ritualistic actions of knocking on wood, crossing fingers, or fondling dead animal limbs to influence the world to form more to our liking. We might not know everything (like Prak) but we certainly know more than our unenlightened ancestors did. We can use our wisdom to overcome the blind adherence to ancient ways of thinking. Prak was spot on regarding one thing…

Most of the good bits were about frogs.

Phred

Post 33 of n

Birthday Candle Induced COPD

Birthday celebrations carry different levels of significance depending on your age. When you are celebrating your first one, you couldn’t care less. You have no idea why today is any different than yesterday. Mom and Dad are making a big fuss, as are almost everyone else in the room (an older sibling might be “fitching a pit” because they are not getting enough attention, but this, too, will pass). B-day 2 is slightly more important, probably because of the lead up excitement tends to carry over. You will have developed some understanding of the patterns of life and might notice today is different somehow. And there’s cake. Then you go to bed and life continues pretty much as before.

The bar gets set higher each year for the next half dozen or so, then seems to level out. Oh, it’s a great day, your B-day, but now it’s not necessarily the high point of your year (late December takes center stage) or the single focus point it might have been before. Other holidays are recognized and anticipated (the spring and fall candy festivals rank highly with people under the age of majority).

Over time, as the calendars pile up on the closet floor, other mileposts loom in the distance. You become “old enough to…” do various things. Drive a car, get a job, get a “friend” (rather than a buddy). Eventually you can drink, vote, and get drafted (not so much now, but a VERY frightening area of growing up during the ’60’s and ’70’s).

But eventually, you hit a plateau, where adding another notch on the belt of life is pretty much just another day (however, one with cake and ice cream). You don’t generally get any substantial benefits from what you had the day before (some restaurants will discount your meal based on your age, but a 1% additional reduction won’t cover the taxes for the meal). And there become certain milestone numbers that actual have additional stress attached (more emotional than rational, but for adult males the first doctor’s appointment after the big 5-0 has “thrills” that can be unnerving to contemplate). Decade numbers (30, 40, 50, …) are all mental triggers you are indeed getting old(er). For some, that is unsettling at best.  Some simply choose to deny or ignore the numbers as they get larger.

I was at a friend’s forty-first (it is less stressful to see it written this way than to just put “41” out there) birthday party. There was around twenty people around and we sat and enjoyed stories and talk (and the mandatory cake and ice cream). Overall it went well, but there was a comment made that really brought us back to reality. Someone mentioned that we didn’t do the same things we had a couple of years ago (might have been referencing a bowling event following the C&IC segment). As the night wore on people excused themselves to depart for home, and eventually the celebrant also departed for home and bed. The end of the event sort of fizzled out and ended with more of a whimper than a bang.

In fairness, there are children tangentially involved that were not “present” during earlier celebrations (I still have one of the “It’s a Boy” cigars as proof) so dad can be exonerated for seeking an opportunity to catch a few additional moments of shut eye. And gravity has increased (continues to grow larger with each passing year) while the length of each day grows shorter over time (while there is about the same amount of light in each day as when I was a kid, they don’t put anywhere as much dark in the nights anymore… just look at the bags under my eyes). So a (more) sedate party should not come as a surprise anymore.

I’m just not looking forward to the pit stops during the upcoming wheelchair races in the (hopefully distant) future.

Phred

post 28 of n

Sermon From the Sidelines: A One Minute Message on Counting To Three (*)

“Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Matthew 12:38-40  KJV

In the beginning (during the 1960’s), we were taught “old” math, usually by doing pages of problems. Ten in a row, 12 rows on a side, both sides with the same function. One day we would do hundreds of addition problems:

\begin{array}{rrrrr} 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 & {} \\ \underline{+1} & \underline{+2} & \underline{+3} & \underline{+4} & \cdots \end{array}

The next might be subtraction. Over time, we learned how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers (the “times tables” we learned in ancient history went through 12 x 12 = 144… today I’m not sure they even teach to memory but how to use a calculator, but that’s another rant post).

So, today we are expected to accept that 24 + 24 + 24 = 40.

At least that is how the “Easter” holiday is laid out. You have the death of Christ occurring after the “ninth” hour (Mark 15:34-37). In bible times, the clock did not start at midnight like we use today, but was geared to the sunrise and sunset. The ninth hour of the day (presuming sunrise to be about 7:00 AM) would occur about 4:00 PM, the middle of the afternoon. In Jewish time reckoning, the day started at sundown (see Genesis 1:5, 8, 13 for examples). Then you have the account of the women going early the morning of the first day of the week (Sabbath ended a week week, so Friday night and Saturday day was the last day of the week). Having them arrive about 8:00 AM on Sunday morning would be a reasonable time for the account in Mark 16:2.  Transferring the times to our clock would have 8 hours passing on Friday night (4:00 PM to midnight), 24 hours to cover all of Saturday, and another 8 hours on Sunday morning. 8 hours + 24 hours + 8 hours = 3 days and 3 nights.

Except it doesn’t add up. I learned that (using a day and a night as being 24 hours long) 24 hours + 24 hours + 24 hours = 3 days and 3 nights. 72 total hours. So if we want to use a full accounting of time, we can’t have the church holidays aligning with “Good Friday” through “Easter Sunday” because 40 does not equal 72.

Might I suggest another explanation that allows the math to work out? Our calendar has two kinds of holidays: those driven by a specific DATE (like Independence Day always falling on July 4th) and those driven by a specific DAY (like Thanksgiving taking place the last Thursday in November).

The Jewish calendar marks the Sabbath on Fridays, every one. But in their system of holidays the Passover remembrance is another Sabbath, driven by a specific date on the calendar. Exodus chapter 12 sets the date at the 14th day of the first month of their year. I would suggest there were two Sabbaths this week, the Passover followed by a day of preparation, then the usual Sabbath day. This provides a full 72 hours to elapse between death and discovery.

I would suggest we celebrate “Wonderful Wednesday” and “Resurrection Saturday” for our depiction of the death and rising of Jesus and leave the usual “Easter” event timing to the world.

It’s just as believable as a rabbit laying decorated hard-boiled chicken eggs and jelly beans…

Phred the Elder
DC3 Heretic Laureate

(* Disclaimer: 60 Second Sermon guaranteed if you read fast enough)

Phred

post 26 of n

Memories of Marilyn

In 1962, President Kennedy had a special birthday celebration, including a rendition of HBDTY by Marilyn Monroe. I was quite young at the time (5) and have no clear recollection apart from watching newsreels and replays over the last 5 decades. Quite a celebration, but not enough to hit the national holiday list. Washington, on the other hand, did have a holiday dedicated to him, at least originally.

Monday the 16th is now referred to as President’s Day, but it used to be called Washington’s Birthday. Yesterday was Lincoln’s. Looking at the site http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/ lists hundreds of holidays of all sorts. Chase’s Calendar of Events 2015 is even more extensive, listing 12,500 events, holidays and special observances for the year. (I owned a copy of this book many years ago, having heard about it on the radio broadcast “Weekend Radio with Ronald Conrad” on WCLV.) Check it out at http://2015chasescalendarofevents.com/ and find out how you can celebrate “your special day” in many, many ways.

But, what I want to know, is who decides when we celebrate, what, and why? Until recently, we had 2 days set aside to presidents, but the vast majority of victims were not deemed sufficient to take a day off for. Why not Millard Filmore, or Richard Nixon for example? We do MLK day but not Columbus day (at least here in Michigan). This year, Independence Day gets double the recognition, being observed (for time off of work) on Friday the 3rd as well as the (traditional) 4th of July.

WHY? (I have a rant about artificial holidays like grandparents and sweetest day, but that will wait for another post.) What or who decided the eleven “official holidays and non-working days” listed were the “correct” ones to celebrate? Why not something in March, April, and August (well, technically we might consider 4/15 to be a national holiday, a very somber event for some, no time off though) to balance out the work year? Christmas has some religious implications as well, but the government has seen fit to include it in (most) lists.

School calendars seem to use a different set of criteria as well. They take off days for many minor deities not in the official Washington pantheon of celebrants. Spring Break? Year End’s Period For Recharging? (These days most school kids spend more time at home in December than in school. When I was a kid, we got off early on the 24th and went back to school on January 2nd.)

Now, since my disability has taken me from the workforce, I am not as adversely affected by the holiday calendar, except when it expects me to purchase gifts for others (see future rant blog for more details). When I try to schedule events with others of gainful employment age I am forced to ask when they are available. Wouldn’t want to offend someone by presuming or omitting a prearranged celebration for someone or thing in their culture.

I’m in favor of making National Ice Cream Day a long weekend…

Phred

post 12 of n