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February
1975
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Whatever happened
to our National Holidays?
by Jean
Shepherd
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It's gotten so you can't tell whether it's
George Washington's Birthday, or George Birthington's Washday - and
there's even talk of trading Valentine's for National Tooth Fairy
Day!
Like every other American of this benighted century, I spend
half my time trying to figure out what the hell's been happening and
the other half pretending that everything is perfectly normal, that
underneath it all everything is just the way it always was, and that
it's all in your mind anyway. But in the dark moments of stark
honesty - and honesty can be as stark as terror any day and is often
the same thing - I've got to admit that the roof is leaking, the
floors are warped, the fireplace keeps blowing soot back into our
face, and the John has developed a permanent gurgling retch that
keeps you awake at night and even blue water in the bowl is no help.
What happened? Where did we stumble? Everything started out so
great. We had such a fine set of handsome, clear-eyed, idealistic
Founding Fathers with faces perfect for carving on the sides of
mountains. And now look at us!
Knee-deep in beer cans, candy wrappers, rusty hubcaps and broken
dreams.
Now, I'm not one to wring my hands. But for anyone truly interested
in just where the Great American Game Plan became untracked,there
are a few glaring clues around. Take holidays. It's an
anthropological fact that there isn't a clan, a tribe, or a nation
around the globe worth its salt that doesn't have a fine, vibrant
set of traditional national holidays.
We as a nation have failed in this important anthropological duty,
and what holidays we seem to have had for a while are now rapidly
pooping out, until most of them resemble nothing more than an
awkward three-day weekend. And a three-day week-end which comes at
the damnedest times, like for instance the middle of February or
right in the middle of July, smack in the center of what is your
vacation anyway.
I got to thinking about our holidays and what's happened to them.
They've mostly become mere shadows or parodies of their former
selves. For example, I've given up entirely, personally, on
Veterans' Day. This past year it seems to have been celebrated, if
at all, on at least four different
dates. Philadelphia had it on one day, New York on another, and I
guess most of the other states just split the difference. And they
can't even decide what to call it any more. It used to be Armistice
Day, then Veterans' Day,
and now since veterans are no longer popular, it has such great
names as National Observance Day or Let's Take Next Monday Off Day.
A few hearty old soreheads will trudge around in the rain wearing
Legion hats but nobody will watch, and even Walter Cronkite will
ignore them.
How about the Fourth of July?
It used to be Independence Day, but since the word 'Independence'
smacks suspiciously of raging mobs, shouted obscenities and chanting
slogans, with the Ambassador trapped in the Legation while
helicopters roar overhead, we've quietly decided to let that one
slide silently down the ways into the Sargasso Sea of oblivion. It
seems just yesterday that the Fourth was roundly celebrated by
Cletus and Big John hurling four-pound cherry bombs under their
friend Art's Chevy, and when the hood blew off and sailed 300 feet
in the air and bounced off the roof of the school everybody in town
cheered, and the police band played the "National Emblem March."
Good God, there was a real holiday, as colorful, exotic and
inexplicable as anything the natives of Bolivia could cook up! But
now the fourth of July is just another day tacked on to another
weekend, and it doesn't even get as hot as it used to.
Freud has completely killed Mother's Day. I know one guy who told
his analyst that every year he sends his mother a little gift on
Mother's Day and the analyst stopped him in mid-sentence and said:
"Aha, just as I suspected: a well-defined Mother Fixation. No doubt
your submerged Homosexual tendencies are. . ."
My friend leaped off the couch and rushed out into the street, and
since that time he not only does not observe Mother's Day, he tears
the page out of the calendar, takes no phone calls for 24 hours, and
his mother, confused by the whole scene, is under the impression
that he has become a merchant seaman and is living in Port Said
between trips.
I, personally, do not know anyone, anywhere, who at any time
celebrated Father's Day, in spite of repeated urgings by men's
stores all over the land to Send Dad a special gift this year. He'd
look great in our vinyl double-breasted four-in-hand foulard. It
never really caught on, since fathers in our country are usually
portrayed as so many Archie Bunkers, and who sends Archie a gift?
Thanksgiving has become actually dreaded by many erstwhile
celebrants. When the very earliest Americans sat down to that first
meal giving thanks for their deliverance after the first year of
suffering and the Indians crept out of the woods bearing gifts, and
together they consumed that fateful first leather-muscled wild
turkey, they knew not what they had spawned. A national day of
prayerful thanksgiving, of prayerful contemplation of our good
fortune and our narrow escape from baleful disaster? Not on your
American Express card, my friend. I haven't heard an honest
expression of thanksgiving, or thanks for anything, in so long that
I wouldn't know how to field it if it came along. It is not in the
American tradition to give thanks, at least these days. Now, if we
had a National Unconditional Demand Day I suspect every last one of
us would celebrate it with a will, eyes asparkle.
Not only is Thanksgiving a philosophical problem, but admit it, we
are now a nation of dieters. The first maker of low-cholesterol,
calorie-free chestnut turkey stuffing is going to really clean up,
especially if he can couple it with the development of a diet
drumstick. We might consent to sit down at the symbolic groaning
board, but until then most people will fiddle around with their
pumpkin pie and finally wind up drinking black coffee, nibbling a
little at the parsley, and then get back to the Bears-Packers game
as soon as they can politely get away from the table.
It must be damned embarrassing these days to be a turkey. It's like
being born a meatloaf. Must be very difficult for an elder turkey to
explain to his children what the future holds for the turkey race
and how grand and glorious their past was before they learned to do
all that basting and flag-raising.
Lincoln's Birthday is increasingly controversial. There are still
many in the Republic who regret the passing of slavery and look upon
Honest Abe as the one who started all our troubles, which finally
led to everything from World War Two to car-stripping and Muhammad
Ali. Personally, I
celebrate Abe's birthday by sipping a little bourbon, Lincoln's
favorite beverage, and plotting on how to free the bonds of my
slavery. But as a national holiday it lacks the requisite of a true
Folk festivity—symbolic parades and ritualistic incantations. Not
only that, but Lincoln has been taken over by the Appliance trade
and every year thousands of inept actors wearing nylon chinwhiskers,
putty noses and cardboard stovepipe hats appear in
commercials describing One Day Only Honest Values etc. etc. etc. It
doesn't do much for the memory of the Illinois rail-splitter, but
then when did Easterners ever pay much attention to the Midwest
anyway?
Now we come to one of the true biggies of our holiday
calendar-Christmas. It's not that Christmas has disappeared. Quite
the contrary. It's gotten to be such a gigantic blockbuster that
people begin to get a bit twitchy and inwardly nervous as early as
the last week of August. Conscience-ridden, harassed, their eyes
dart as day by day falls off the calendar and a tiny voice deep
inside keeps yelping: "For God sakes, man, you haven't even started
your Christmas shopping! Is it gonna be last year all over again? Or
the year before that or the one before that? You'd better start
buying now, man, I'm warning you. It's already August 25th.
Christmas is right around the corner, and. ."
Now what the hell kind of holiday is that? Does the nation look
forward to it with untrammeled joy, with eager anticipation? No,
almost to a man they are gripped by panic. The sense of imminent
failure. They join Clubs hoping to systematically save enough
pennies per week so that this Christmas will not reduce them to
abject poverty. Does one see glass angels, tiny elves building
sleds, ethereal fragrant fresh-smelling pine trees hung with tinsel
and popcorn and candles? No. Most state laws forbid it, and the
mighty orchestrated triple-pronged sales pitch makes Beethoven's B
Minor 9th Symphony sound tinny and pale by comparison.
Even as a kid I couldn't figure out what frankincense was, must less
myhrr, and as far as partridges in pear trees, that was something
the girls' glee club sang about. But Christmas does have a certain
rich baroque barbaric vitality. I admit frankly, openly, that I
enjoy giving presents. Almost as much as I enjoy getting them, and
that's a lot.
May what's wrong with our holidays is that they don't any longer
actually celebrate things that are truly relevant to our everyday
lives. Every celebration seems to be about an event or some person
out of the far distant past, and it's really hard to relate
personally to them. I would like to suggest an entire new set of
national holidays that I am convinced would once again give our
nation a sense of purpose and unity, the feeling that we are indeed
a distinct, fully-realized nationality and not just a bunch of
foreigners gathered together to make a buck. These holidays would
not only provide us with a day of celebration, but also a day of
psychological release, which is what a good holiday should provide.
So I suggest that the President proclaim the following holidays:
1 NATIONAL NO-FAULT DIVORCE DAY
Since almost half of our population has been divorced at least once,
this is a sorely needed holiday. A day of na-
tional observance of the joy and freedom of the Divorce could be
celebrated by exchanging colorful cards to ex-mates, naturally the
exchange of expensive gifts particularly weapons of all sorts, and
those who are not yet divorced but are contemplating it could take
advantage of the Presidential decree of No Fault on this special
holiday. Appropriate songs, dances, and possibly even parades
commemorating Divorce through the ages, with attendant television
coverage. Naturally, it would be a day of no work; banks closed.
This is particularly important since banks are usually very closely
allied to the Divorce process.
2 CURT GOWDY DAY
A day on which all regular television programming on all networks,
including commercials, is cancelled to celebrate and honor the
national preoccupation with professional sports. All day, from
sign-on to sign-off, the air would be filled with old golf matches,
baseball games, football games, soccer matches; anything narrated
and described play-by-play by Curt Gowdy. In some other parts of the
country, this could be dubbed HOWARD COSELL DAY. This entire holiday
would naturally be backed by the National Association of Breweries
and would be celebrated by the incessant popping of beer cans and
the continual crunch of Frito-Lays. This holiday would be an instant
hit.
3 GUILT DAY
Since most Americans are burdened with an unreasonable, mysterious
sense of guilt this holiday could very well become a major national
event, proclaimed by the President that on this day all persons
feeling guilt of any kind can openly parade it, discuss it, weep,
tear their hair, with no repercussions whatsoever, and in fact will
be applauded for doing so. Costumes consisting of tastefully-cut
sackcloth and ashes would be worn to Guilt parties, commonly known
as Breast Beatings. Naturally, thousands of analysts would preside
over the services and National Guilt Day would not only have a
cleansing effect on the psyche of the country but could also be
turned to good commercial gain. Department stores would be
encouraged to run Guilt Sales where special buys in notably shoddy
merchandise would be held and the buyer would buy out of sheer
masochism, letting himself go, as it were, on this one day of the
year.
4 NATIONAL ENMITY WEEK
Brotherhood Week has been a total flop. The time has come to frankly
and openly admit it. During National Enmity Week all groups, blocs,
militant organizations, and other creative and helpful elements of
our population would be given at last a chance to honestly state
their true views with no fear of retribution or other official and
unofficial harassment. "SCREW THE LANDLORDS" "FIRE A WASP TODAY"
"WHO NEEDS WOODY ALLEN?" and thousands of other honest slogans would
be proudly worn on buttons and displayed on colorful posters by both
in dividuals and groups. This week of total candor could well bring
us together as no other device has yet done.
5 THROW OUT THAT DAMN MODEL AIRPLANE KIT DAY
This holiday is inevitable. It will have to be created eventually.
There are millions upon millions of poor hapless people in this
great land of ours who have, tucked away in closets or hidden under
workbenches, unfinished projects which were started years ago in a
moment of exhuberant recklessness and now will never be finished;
hence are causing nagging feelings of failure as well as taking up a
hell of a lot of house room. Half-completed ship models, plastic
zeppelin kits, home-made harpsichords, looms upon which no one ever
did or ever will "weave that great Swedish rug for the dining room,"
expensive guitars bought in a moment of Folk enthusiasm only to be
cast aside when the fingers began to ache and the discovery that
anything beyond a G minor chord was impossible to play by the human
hand. All this junk would be purged from our lives on National Throw
Out That Damned Model Airplane Kit Day. The unfinished albatrosses
would be placed on the curb at nightfall and during the night, like
the Tooth Fairy, trucks would roam the cities removing all traces of
our follies to be dumped far out at sea along with other waste
products of our civilization.
6 ROBERT REDFORD DAY
All schools would be closed. No business would be transacted on this
holiday celebrating the life and times and the birthdate of a true
American saint. The wearing of Robert Redford medallions in silver
and bronze as well as the public display of Robert Redford pictures
in private homes and places of business and worship would be
permitted. Since your average yahoo is far more interested in Robert
Redford than in Abraham Lincoln, this holiday would provide the
nation with much-needed symbolic heroes. Actors playing the part of
Robert Redford would perform in school auditoriums, and children
would be assigned the task of writing fan letters to Robert Redford
as they once did to Santa Claus.
Naturally, there would have to be ELIZABETH TAYLOR DAY, which would
be interchangeable with JACKIE ONASSIS DAY. The vast cult of
Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Onassis fanatics would thereby have a
day to celebrate openly, publicly and with civic sanction the
enshrinement of their heroines.
7 NATIONAL SUPERBOWL DAY
This holiday has already been a fact for some time. It simply hasn't
yet been officially proclaimed. National Superbowl Day would provide
a tremendous boon for the manufacturers of greeting cards, and the
exchange of Superbowl Greetings would become mandatory much as
Christmas cards used to be. The cards would read such sentimental
verses as Once again the time draws near/Again the Superbowl is
here/Packers Redskins Bears and Colts//Bengals Dolphins and Giants
too/May this day find you and yours/Scoring a Grand Slam. This could
easily become a four or even five day holiday, as I think in the
future since the three day holiday has now come, the next step has
to be the four and the five day celebration. We could begin with
Superbowl Week.
These are just a very few of the holidays and Folk rituals which I
could suggest that are guaranteed not only to bring our land closer
together but also provide a rich bounty for merchandisers far beyond
our pretty present day dreams. Thousands of regional holidays could
spring up, following the old European custom of every fishing
village celebrating its own patron saint and local hero:
RICHARD PETTY DAY for Alabama and Mississippi; MERLE HAGGARD DAY for
Oklahoma and for soreheads everywhere; MUGGERS DAY for New York
City, where everyone would be permitted to take part for a change
and you would be allowed to symbolically mug your boss or your wife.
Yep, it just isn't easy to explain to the kids just who George
Washington was or why Abraham Lincoln was important. It would be a
hell of a lot easier to get them to hoist the flag for Paul Newman
or get dewy-eyed over Joe Namath Day.
We are one nation, with liberty and justice for all. Let's just
celebrate that." |
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