What a conundrum was caused by this last Christmas – New Year, with the major celebratory days falling mid-week! A highly uncomfortable arrangement resulting in the utter destruction of two entire weeks of commerce and regularity and inducing one hell of a post-holiday hangover syndrome. A nearly unsurmountable struggle to remember what day it actually was let alone where one was supposed to appear and with what gift, dish or bottle. Not to mention the diligent who continued to attempt some semblance of normalcy by actually working the beginnings and endings of both weeks, as if there were four mini-weeks instead of two regular-sized weeks. Exhausting.
Really, it all began with Thanksgiving and Channukah smashed all up on each other, like some awkward Jewish-Puritanical dinner party. With ham off the menu, who had time to think about wishing anyone a “Happy Kwansaa” for crying out loud.
Generally, Thanksgiving holds a place of honor in the pantheon of holidays. A truly well-thought out reflection of our modern appetite for celebration, Thanksgiving reliably offers us a four-day weekend with the promise of family and feasting followed by two solid days of unbridled shopping. And then Sunday we rest. Just like God intended.
Surely, I am not the only red-blooded American who finds it unseemly that in this great land of more-than-plenty we are still bound to a holiday calendar prescribed by a long dead self-serving religious patriarch. How are we to stand up as a fully formed global power when we have yet to reconcile our schedules of celebration?
Over the course of history, this great nation of ours has successfully secularized, sterilized and commercialized our celebratory obligations. And yet we continue to allow this affront to our consumerist sensibilities. My fellow Americans, it is high time some one stepped forward to reign in this calendrical circus. Who will rescue us from these antiquated habitual patterns and bring forth a system of holidays we can all be proud of?