HOLLY DAZED - part 2

by Cynthia MacGregor

(con'td from yesterday)

Column Bus Day was first celebrated in New York. It used to be that you could stand on a corner for ages waiting for a bus and not see one, then have a whole column of buses come caravanning down Fifth Avenue at once. Conditions have somewhat improved since then, though it’s still impossible to get a taxi in the rain, but that’s a different transit problem and one that so far has not been recognized with a holiday.

Elect Shun Day celebrates the vast numbers of people who shun the polls and refuse to elect anyone, since nobody ever runs who’s worth voting for. People who run for office are known as Candy Dates, since they promise that everything will be sweeter on the day they’re elected. Some, when they get a closer look at what government is like, make stupid statements clearly intended to throw the election to their opponents. Others, like Jesse Ventura, threaten to throw the opponents themselves.

Veteran’s Day used to be called Our Mistress Day. Apparently some famous general’s mistress ended WW I, and the women of America have never let the men forget it. The holiday was declared by the toilet manufacturers association, so we could all enjoy pees.

The trouble is, the end of WW I was followed by the start of WW II, after which we had Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan/Iraq, and a bunch of lesser wars. (A lesser war is one in which no one you know personally got killed or wounded. Although none of these wars seemed “lesser” to the people who were killed or wounded in them.) At that point, it seemed silly to celebrate the end of fighting a war that had not only gone into summer reruns but into perpetual syndication as well. So it was decided to celebrate the soldiers who fought the war instead. The hope was that they’d want to stick around for the yearly celebration instead of runing off to fight another war, and so maybe this time the peace would really last instead of the war just changing its name and starting over in a different country.

Hollow Wienie Day is celebrated by eating cored-out frankfurters. These are often stuffed with candy corn, which is a traditional food for this holiday. So is Pepto-Bismol. Many “goody bags” have been dumped for emergency use as barf bags—often not quickly enough. Even though it’s not on any calendar, carpet cleaners all celebrate November 1 as a working holiday, the busiest day of the year.

Macy’s Day is also known as Turkey Day. I think it has some other name, too. The three highlights of the day are The Parade, The Dinner, and Football. Macy’s Day celebrates the Official Start of the Holiday Season, though unofficially the stores have been selling Christmas decorations and overpriced gifts since Halloween.

The day starts with the televising of the annual Macy’s Day Parade. They always include a shot of the blimp overhead, and you just know you’re going to feel like that blimp by the end of the evening and look like it by the end of the holiday season ahead. On Turkey Day we first stuff a turkey, then stuff ourselves with turkey. It’s a very democratic holiday.

Other accompaniments include cramberry sauce (so called because we cram so much into our mouths), pie (and for mathematicians pie are squared but for the rest of us it’s circular…and delicious) (and we can’t possibly eat another bite...okay, just a small slice), sweet potatoes (which are actually in the morning glory family even though they are usually eaten in the evening), and of course stuffing, which some people make with liver (“Liver alone—you know she can’t stand the stuff”) while others use bacon, sausage, or even oysters for flavor, and I oyster have a recipe for that variation, but I don’t.

Chrismist is a day you mustn’t foget, even if your memory is hazy. Santa Claws nails this holiday down. It’s another day that celebrates farmers, too—Santa’s making a list and chicken it twice. Bad kids get coal in their stockings. Good kids get CDs of Natalie Cole. Nobody gets cole slaw.

December 26 isn’t a holiday, but is celebrated by many for Not Having To Listen To Any More of That Damn Music. It is a big shopping day, when people return unwanted gifts, buy themselves gifts they wanted but didn’t get from anyone else, and stock up on presents for next year at After-Christmas Sales. Only 364 shopping days till next Christmist.

And so we round out the year, coming up on New Year’s Eve, named after our Biblical Foremother. We celebrate by watching a ball or apple fall (in honor of Sir Isaac Newton) and by commenting on what a relief it is that Dick Clark is finally beginning to show signs of aging. Tomorrow is the first day of the New Year, when we’ll start this whole calendar all over again and celebrate with football, leftover dip, and a hair of the dog that bit us, even if we’re not sure what it is that we’re celebrating. The approaching end of the football season? No mail, and therefore no bills to pay? The chance to break a whole new set of resolutions? The fact that New Year’s doesn’t automatically fall on a Monday?