Saturday, March 12, 2011

My Favorite Holidays

Trivia question: What is the only month in which America does not celebrate a holiday?

As I write this during spring break, I realize that holidays are very important to me. Now they're obviously very popular amongst everyone, but I think I particularly like to break up the monotony of the daily grind by celebrating random segments of the calendar. It helps knowing that as the days tick by, there's something to look forward to every week or two. Case in point is Exelauno Day. Exelauno is an ancient Greek verb meaning to "march forth." Thus on March 4th, my classics-loving private high school "celebrates" by mandating that all of the student body wears coat and tie and every Latin or Greek class select one member to act out a skit in that dead language, in front of everybody. This is now broadcast live on the web. To me, I love this holiday because it is an institutionalized celebration of a bad pun. If we would all have lightsabre fights on May 4th (may the fourth be with you) then life would be even better. But anyways, now even 5 years removed from high school I still smile fondly when the calendar moves from 3/3 to 3/4. I also like wishing people happy holidays in other cultures, such as Bastille Day or 国庆节, and it did strike me when I first went abroad how cultural holidays are. The only holiday that most of the world shares is New Year's, and even that doesn't always hold true. This list here thus reflects absolutely no one's holidays except my quirky own. My eleven favorite:

11) Patriot's Day
The third Monday in April commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord, or the start of the Revolutionary War. This is not to be confused with 9/11, now memorialized as Patriot Day. Patriot's Day is actually only celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine, but here it was always a day off. Not only that but the Boston Marathon is staged on Patriot's Day, and runners go through Commonwealth Avenue within a few blocks of my house. The Red Sox traditionally play an 11am game as well, timed to finish at approximately the same time runners would reach the Fenway area. It's often a great, sunny spring day that celebrates all that is great about Boston. It's also still in April though, where April showers bring May flowers (and Mayflowers bring white people to America) so there are plenty of ugly rainy days as well to remind me why I went south for college. Patriot's Day can escape your notice outside of Massachusetts and I must admit I completely forgot about it last year.

10) Easter
The most important holiday in the liturgical year, Easter is ranked a little bit lower than you might imagine. After all, there's usually a lot of chocolate, a delicious brunch, eternal salvation and the chance to do everything you gave up during Lent. The problem is that I am often coming off 40 days of trying to not do whatever lofty goal I failed to meet. Easter is of course a family holiday, but not one that most people get days off for and so rarely justifies any type of travel or reunion. But since it's a family holiday, it's not a time where one meets up with friends either. In addition, though recently changed, daylight savings time used to start on the first Sunday of April, which often fell on Easter. So we'd lose an hour of sleep, which did not make the long morning mass any easier. But going to a Jesuit University, I've had Thursday-Monday off for a few years (an awkward break, but good enough to come home and relax) and appreciated the holiday. On top of that, the secular benefits include spring weather, bunnies, chocolate eggs, painted eggs, the White House egg hunt and good spirits all around. Easter loses some points for it's absurdly complicated dating system: First Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. How good can a holiday be if no one can figure out when it occurs?

9) April Fool's Day
Really just a great day for those who love to take part in practical pranks. However, for a large portion of the population, this day is completely ignored. For another small part, this day is mishandled and filled with bad, lame jokes. But then there's me. I once convinced my mom I was dropping out of school, then convinced my roommate he had an STD. Yeah. Only MIT students can top that.

8) Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is the holiday where we celebrate all the things we are thankful, but especially food and football. I love all of that so so much. The reason this holiday is lower than you think is that we also celebrate family during this time. For me this time has tended to be a joyous break on Wednesday, a great feast on Thursday, and then 3 days to kill in the worsening winter. In my experience I've found it hard to get people together in those times since so many people travel for reunions. Also traveling is never worse than during Thanksgiving - they say the Wednesday before has the most traffic.

7) New Year's Day
I like New Year's a lot. Though I've yet to be out of school so it's always been a part of my winter breaks, New Year's is essentially just one party. However it's a great party, where many people who don't normally get drunk will make an exception. There's champagne, decorations, countdowns and new year's kisses, of which I think I'm 0 for 23. But if you really think about it, the countdown looks pretty silly and arbitrary. And New Year's resolutions are just stupid. I think I have this a little bit lower than I perhaps should because I've had some pretty mediocre New Year's in recent memory. Nevertheless I'm convinced that house parties are the way to celebrate this - nothing appeals to me less than spending hours in Times Square in the cold without easy access to bathrooms or booze. That said, I do hope to make it to Edinburgh for NYE at one point in my life, where they supposedly do it best.

6) Super Bowl Sunday
This is also a one day party, but one that people talk about for 2 weeks or 2 months ahead of time. It's an American tradition unlike any other, that gets girls to actually watch sports. This past decade has featured some great Super Bowls, including 3 Patriot wins, so I have very positive memories associated with this holiday. It's great for those who love sports, funny commercials, making fun of bumbling commentators, guacamole and salsa dip, junk food and beer. The Super Bowl is basically our country's largest annual cheap banquet where everyone faces the same direction.

5) Halloween
I waffled a lot on the following few holidays before ultimately placing Halloween fifth. It's a great holiday for a few unique reasons: 1. Almost any crazy costume that you ever wanted to wear becomes socially acceptable 2. These costumes give you the opportunity to make your puns visible 3. Girls, and guys, often wear extremely revealing and occasionally attractive outfits 4. It is socially acceptable to stare and comment on these outfits 5. There's a lot of candy around, and trick or treating is still fun. In past years, especially this last one, some of the best parties I've attended were Halloween parties. This year also marked the first time that I gave away candy to trick or treaters. In time I've grown very accustomed to Halloween to the extent that I'm bouncing costume ideas off people in September. In fact this is one of Halloween's added bonuses - it provides good conversation material throughout the year. However, I've still come up with some lame costumes over the years and being well-dressed is often a very stressful and costly activity. Neither spending $100 on a costume nor cutting a hole in a trash bag and going as Darth Vader (as my brother once did) are very appealing options. Also, whenever Halloween falls in the week, it creates a very awkward situation. Do you celebrate the Saturday before? The Friday after? Or that day? Sometimes this splits into 3 parties, none of which are as good as they should be.

4) St. Patrick's Day
Not everybody likes stupid excuses to drink. Not everybody enjoys getting drunk during the day for no apparent reason. Not everybody like the taste of Guinness. Not everybody would be the one Asian who studied abroad in Ireland. I am very clearly not everybody. In the last 3 years, I've planned my week and wardrobe around St. Patrick's Day. Two years ago, I was walking/stumbling to my combinatorics class when I ran into Liz. I wished her a "happy St Patrick's Day" and she asked me what I was doing that night to celebrate. I replied, "same thing I've been doing all day." Last year, I bought lots of Jameson and Baileys in Tulsa, OK where the prices were much cheaper, and dragged it all the way back cross country with me. I spent Monday gathering Irish music. Then on Wednesday when I had the most classes, I finished all my homework and looked over notes beforehand, then pregamed all four of them with an Irish Car Bomb. I wore green and spoke with an Irish accent the entire day and ended the night with an awesome party. So yes, I like St. Patrick's Day for entirely juvenile reasons. But tomorrow, I can also see who else share these same tastes just by the color of their clothes.

3) Chinese New Year's
This is without doubt, 100% serious, one of my favorite times of the year. The highlight here is food whereas the highlight of the preceding holiday was drink, and in the end food is much more important. 年糕, the year cake dessert that I've only ever eaten around New Year's remains timelessly delicious. Dumplings are also strongly associated with the holiday and are always tremendous. The festivities are so grand in Chinese communities, greater than anything Americans ever do for days like July 4th, probably because cultural celebrations are more important in older cultures. While I'm never excited for Lion Dances, I like the general atmosphere and hope to be in Asia at some point in my life for CNY. It's also the biggest windfall holiday in my life, with laisee and new clothes out the wazoo. At some point when I'm the one handing out the money on CNY, perhaps I'll think of this holiday differently. But for now, it's so great.

2) July 4th
As pointed out in the previous holiday, July 4th is less of spectacle than Chinese New Year's. However, it is as big a festival as we have in this country and it's a good one. It seems to me to be always a sunny day off with good barbecue, watermelon and fireworks. It's a little bit like New Year's Eve except in the summer and with patriotism. America really is a great country and it's easy to feel that way on the fourth of July. I've been abroad two of the past three July 4ths, and while that's tough it's a great occasion to bond with fellow Americans abroad.

1) Christmas
It's impossible to top Christmas. A season more than a holiday, the three weeks of overplayed music and overcrowded shopping is too much for many people to handle, but I love it. I love snow in December (but hate it in January and February when it's gotten old and cold), shopping for those closest to me, breaking my alternative Christmas music playlist and the long winter break. I love giving, I love getting, and I love the spirit and hearing "happy holidays" from strangers and saying "merry Christmas" back. As a secular holiday, it celebrates all the right things in life, to the extent that it doesn't matter that it's spawned from a religious holiday that not everyone celebrates. As a religious holiday, it celebrates the birthday of the most important and most admirable person to walk the Earth. For all the Hallmarkness and consumerism that modernity has brought to this ancient holiday, I still love waking up on Christmas morning and feeling like a kid.


Honorable mentions (no particular order): Pi Day, Labor Day, Festivus, Groundhog Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Earth Day, Ides of March, Leap Day, Harry Potter's Birthday, Handover Day, March Madness.

Trivia Answer: August