We need new holidays. Valentine’s Day is coming up, preceded in abundance by “the holiday season”, Thanksgiving and the Superbowl of childhood holidays, Halloween. The more you know about the origins of these days the more you may question our embrace of them. Here’s an appetizer. One theory regarding the origins of Valentine’s Day involves cutting strips of sheep, dipping them in sacrificial blood and slapping women with them. And the women liked it. Makes you want to Google, doesn’t it?
So anyway, I was reading an article about deprivation studies and how well it has worked for Burger King. Depriving customers of Whoppers seems to have made them absolutely furious, demanding their prompt return. I began wondering how we can put that theory to use right here. Come to think of it, that might be what Romney is up to. Withdrawing with the sheer intent of creating a groundswell for his nomination as VP. Very clever, Mitt. Very clever indeed. Admittedly, I’ve used this deprivation theory myself. Children have begged me to keep reading instead of going out for recess. I gave them a scornful look and said, “Well, maybe just this once.” or, “You can do a power point presentation about elections when you’ve proven to me you can remember to put your crayons away.” Yeah, they actually fall for this stuff.
Synthesizing all of this, one can only anticipate that through systematic deprivation, we can get what we all say we want for our children, to realize the true meanings of holidays. When you think of it, we have morphed even the most altruistic of celebrations into mere “getting days“. New Year’s Eve is for getting clothes, parties, food, booze and in some cases dramatic presentations of jewelry. Valentine’s Day is for getting candy, cards, proposals, reassurances and for those lucky few, underwear with hearts. St. Patrick’s Day is for getting drunk. Easter is for getting more candy, new clothes and cards with the ever confusing images of rabbits laying eggs. Memorial Day is not much of a getting day, unless you count beer soaked barbequed brats as a gain. We should keep that one. We can also keep the 4th of July, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day and MLK day unless gift exchanges are drummed up for those somehow. Whether or not we have President’s Day should be decided in the president’s last year. Not until then can we determine if it is really deserved. Manufactured holidays need to go. Mother’s, Father’s and Grandparent’s Day actually do all a disservice. Because these days exist, people are given absolution, or shall we say amnesty, from the absence of presence the rest of the year.
It seems that there are three classes of holidays: the religious, the political and the Wall Street and what we need to make all three are non-action holidays. Give nothing, get nothing. Once someone gives something, that something automatically flaws the whole holiday so NO giving. There will be those people who can’t help themselves, however. Pandoras who say, “Oh, it’s nothing, really. “ They dump into the pure waters of unselfishness, the red Kool Aid of obligatory consumerism generating an ambivalent, frantic run out to gas stations for tube roses to place on the traitor’s desks with a little cards that ought to say something like, “Thanks Judas.”
We need to deprive all of us the holidays we’ve so intoxicated and welcome their resumption in about a decade or two if we still need them then. But who knows? Maybe we will have given up the binge eating of pandemic holiday emotion in exchange for a more constant diet of consideration and reflection. Until then, don’t forget Thursday.
p.s. I hear you can order pajamagrams now.
