We Need Better Holidays

This week's convergence of Valentine's Day and President's Day has led me to the following conclusion: These holidays all suck. Go look through a calendar, look at all the nonsense holidays. It's not all nonsense, but there's a lot of nonsense in there. Somebody has to do something about this, and I nominate me. I'm not saying we cancel the holidays, we all need days off work. I'm saying we're America and we can do better! Some holidays can stay, but many need replacing, or at least updating. Let's do this month by month.

January
January's main holidays are New Years and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They can both stay. We need to celebrate the new year sometime and it's important that we all recognize the fulfilment of Dr. King's dream that, one day, people of all races would come together to not have work, or school. Can we move black history month to January though? Why isn't Martin Luther King Jr. Day during black history month? How hard is that? Who plans these things? This idea would also get black history month out of February and into a real month, thus rectifying the greatest injustice of our time.

February
This is where it starts to get ugly. President's Day? Look, if Lincoln and Washington can't even have their own days anymore, then why even bother? Valentine's Day? Sorry, we're getting rid of all made up, greeting card holidays. And don't even get me started on Groundhog Day. So first, obviously, we're giving the former Presidents back their own holidays. Washington gets the second Monday and Lincoln gets the third, and we get off for both. Lincoln freed the slaves, how is that not good enough for his own day?

I'm also adding a day. I think we should all celebrate Purim. You heard me. Look, I don't know much about Purim, but I know when I worked at Hofstra the Rabbi used to always bring me a pastry and a little note about Purim, and it was pretty awesome. One problem though, sometimes Purim is in March. Jewish holidays are a mess, they're all over the place. I think we need to help them. Let's pin Purim down on February 23rd every year. This also makes life a little more fair, because I'll be taking away most of the Christian holidays, but not all of them. So I think Judaism deserves one, and I'm picking Purim.

March
St. Patrick's Day? Come on. Listen, speaking as someone who is 100% Irish, I can tell you that we don't need you to make up an excuse for us to get drunk, we can take care of drinking excuses all on our own. As for the rest of you, I'm tired of you all pretending to be Irish every year. I'm putting an end to this. Luckily, I have a perfect replacement. I say, every year, we make sure baseball season starts on March 30th. Everyone gets a day off to watch baseball, and you can still drink if you want to. Works for me.

April
Easter's a mess too, I never know when Easter is. Every year I'm just sitting here and all of a sudden it's good Friday. Also, I try not to mock religion too much here, but even when I used to go to church, the whole premise of Easter seemed a little thin to me. I'm inclined to get rid of it completely, but I do like the hard boiled eggs and other people like the chocolate. So first, we clean up the mess. Easter is April 3rd every year. Done. Second, we change the name. Chocolate Day is a little too on the nose and a little too specific. Candy Day sounds like a strip club holiday for some reason. Bunny Day? That kinda sounds like a strip club holiday too. Naming holidays is hard.

I've got it! Spring Break is a national holiday every year. OK, so forget about April 3rd, Spring Break week is the second week in April. You start the week, on the Sunday before, with chocolate and alcohol, and you end the week, on the last Sunday, with hard boiled eggs as part of breakfast. They'll help with the hangovers. This also works because a lot of people get at least a week off for Easter or Passover (yeah, Spring Break is replacing Passover too), so keeping it a week long holiday solves that problem. I love this idea.

May
Memorial Day stays, no questions asked. I'd sign off on a Memorial Day every month if people wanted one. Mother's Day? Sorry, another greeting card holiday, and we don't even get a day off for it. Also, shouldn't we be able to summon the humanity to be nice to our mothers once a year without someone telling us to? Since we don't get a day off for Mother's Day, it doesn't really need replacing. I'd also like the Tuesday after Memorial Day off, no reason, just because.

June
Everything I said about Mother's Day goes for Father's Day too. June needs a holiday though. We could celebrate the summer solstice. Of course, we could also sacrifice animals and virgins to our gods, but we're not pagans and this isn't the 4th century BC, so no thanks. I have a much better, and frankly, long overdue idea. June 13th is now Carrier Day. Every year, on June 13th, we will celebrate Willis Haviland Carrier, inventor of air conditioning. The beginning of summer is a perfect time for this, and if you still want to get your dad something, you can buy him an air conditioner.

July

Independence Day can stay. Honestly, it's not my favorite holiday, but fireworks are pretty and July doesn't really have that much else to offer. We can probably spruce it up a little though. Let's combine it with Halloween, which I'll be banishing from October anyway. From now on, for the 4th of July, kids can dress up as their favorite founding father. This would be a real boon for the powered wig industry, which somehow missed the boat on a government bailout. You don't get candy though, just fireworks and freedom.

August

August is the worst month. It's hot, there's nothing going on, kids have nothing to look forward to but going back to school. Why we haven't put a good holiday somewhere in the middle of this month is really beyond me. I'm moving Labor Day to the third week of August, and making it Labor Week. Each day could have a theme, like Monday could be railroad day. For the kids, Friday's theme would be Jimmy Hoffa. It would be just like an Easter egg hunt, only instead of eggs, you'd hide little Jimmy Hoffa dolls all over your house and let the kids find them. Fun for everyone, and it would give birth to a new industry of Jimmy Hoffa doll making.

September
I moved Labor Day because I already had a great idea for September. The second Sunday of September is when we'll observe the beginning of football season. We get Friday off to draft fantasy teams and Monday off to talk about the success or failure of our fantasy teams, and possibly also to try and recover from gambling losses. The most important part of this would be completely getting rid of the NFL's Thursday night season opener. Football happens on Sunday, and then one extra game happens Monday. And that's it. No Thursday. NO THURSDAY!

October
Columbus Day might be my least favorite holiday. First of all, I'm not sure "discovered" is the proper word to describe what happens when you accidentally stumble across land that other people already live on. That's like going to visit your neighbors and then claiming to have discovered the pool you didn't know they had in their backyard. It had already been discovered, you just didn't know about it yet, and finding out about it doesn't make it your pool. Columbus Day is definitely out.

Halloween's out too. Candy on Halloween is the same as greeting cards on Mother's Day or Valentine's Day. It's just a made up holiday to sell stuff. Also, aren't we sort of heading this way anyway? How many more years of Halloween do you think we get before paranoid parents all decide they can't let their kids go around the neighborhood wearing masks and asking strangers for candy? 20 years? 30 years? Why wait?

So October needs an influx of new holidays. I've got two ideas, and I think we only need to pick one, or we could do both, either way works for me. My first idea would involve promoting some holidays from the minor leagues. In Alaska, October 18th is Alaska Day. Why can't everyone celebrate Alaska? October 24th is United Nations Day, which we should probably enjoy while it lasts. That's only my second favorite October idea though. You may have noticed I didn't mention April Fools Day in April. Well, if everybody knows it's April Fools Day, you can't really fool anyone. I say we make it April Fools Month, and move it to October (still calling it April Fools Month). People would be totally fooled.

November
Just like Memorial Day, Veterans Day stays, period. Thanksgiving's a real toss-up for me. First of all, who am I supposed to be thanking? Secondly, turkey is like 13th on my list of favorite meats. Also, Thanksgiving promotes more football on Thursdays, and I'm still not a fan. On the plus side, it's two days off from work and kids like the parade. Also, we just started having Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house a couple of years ago, and my aunt's a really good cook, so there's that. The verdict? I'm putting Thanksgiving on probation. It can stay for now, but we're re-evaluating it in ten years, and we're changing the turkey to bacon.

December
Christmas stays. Christians hate hearing this, but Christmas has become so disassociated from religion, that really everyone can celebrate it. I'm making one tweak, everyone gets the week between Christmas and New Years off. Everyone. No exceptions. Regardless of all the awesome new holidays I just created, Christmas is still the king of the holidays, and it always will be. Why? Because everyone loves presents. Sometimes it's just that simple.