HOLLY DAZED

by Cynthia MacGregor

New Year’s is a Jewish holiday. You can tell from the name, which is actually Nu Year?, nu being a quintessential Jewish word, a prompt, whose meanings include “What do you think?” and “So tell me already.” In this case, the question, “Nu, year?” clearly means, “So, the year’s got a different date on it—what makes you think the year is going to be any different from the year we just finished? All of a sudden, things are going to be different just because a digit or two got changed and you’re starting on a fresh calendar?” The Jews can put a lot into one word.

Markin’ Letter King Day celebrates a postal worker who postmarked a whole sackful of letters without routing anything addressed to Los Angeles (L.A.) into the Louisiana (LA) bin and without going crazy and shooting anyone either. We commemorate his remarkable accomplishment on this day.

Ground Hog Day is a big shopping day, on which most supermarkets put pork meat on sale.

Vail in Time Day marks a point near the end of the skiing season—if you go before the holiday is over, you can still get to Vail in time for the slopes to be good. It is also celebrated by sweethearts giving various allegedly heart-shaped items to the ones they love. Have you ever seen a picture of your heart? Does it at all resemble the red item on the cover of that card you got? On the other hand, would you want to get a mushy, romantic card with a picture of that on the cover? It doesn’t exactly inspire romance, does it? Maybe inaccuracy has its advantages.

Precedent’s Day honors the precedent set in having all holidays fall on a Monday. Did you know that Columbus discovered America on the second Monday in October? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was born on a different day every year? July 4th fell on the 5th this year. So far Christmas and New Year’s are inviolate (inside a small purple flower), but any year now…just watch!

Precedent’s Day replaces two other holidays, which formerly used to celebrate “Honest Ape,” our first simian president, and Judge Washington, who started out sitting on the bench but decided the chair in the oval office was more comfortable.

St. Hat Trick’s Day celebrates the saint who chased the snakes out of Ireland three times. Of course, there are those who think there never were any snakes in Ireland, that the snakes were merely a hallucination brought about by the consumption of too much Irish whiskey. “Whiskey” is, of course, a simple declarative sentence telling what the group of us does every day that the slopes are snowy.

He Stir is a holiday on which men do the cooking while women get new bonnets (a bonnet is half a small bonbon). The He Stir Bunny (actually a corruption of Bonny, a diminutive bonnet) hides eggs for kids to find. I suspect that the chicken farmers of America somehow are responsible for this holiday. Before the He Stir dinner, the kids run around the house with eggs, yelling, “Dye it, dye it!” After the He Stir dinner, the grownups loosen their belts and yell, “Diet, diet!” What He Stir is mainly famous for is not falling on a Monday.

Mudder’s Day celebrates a particular kind of horse, the kind that likes to run on a track that’s been rained on. These horses have always been known as mudders, and this day is named in their honor. Fans go to the race track and yell themselves ho(a)rse to celebrate.

Memorable Day is the day we celebrate the start of summer, the calendar (and the temperature) notwithstanding. Some of us celebrate it by watching a group of crazy people race around and around an oval track, trying to kill themselves in fast cars. Others of us take more personal risks, by swimming amid the jellyfish at an unguarded beach where there is an undertow, less than an hour after eating lunch. (How do fish manage? They always swim less than an hour after eating. Yet how many reports of fish drownings have you read?) If you are going to go in the water less than an hour after eating, you should make sure to eat donuts—not jelly ones but the kind with holes. These are shaped like life preservers and so can help you stay afloat in case of a problem.

Flagged Day celebrates all the people whose energy has already flagged, although summer has barely started. The holiday offers them encouragement that they can get through till the end of the barbeque-beach-vacation season. Of course the premise is a crock, since most people who go away on vacation need one worse than ever by the time they’ve returned and caught up on mail, bills, phone messages, back newspapers, the laundry, the lawn, and everything else that’s piled up while they were away.

Fodder Day honors a farm product. Contrary to popular belief, it does not honor the fact that we are getting “fodder and fodder away” from our heritage, even though farm life is far in the distant past for most of our families.

July Forth was originally the beginning of July. (“From this day forth it will be July.”) But an early calendar maker botched up the square in which he printed the holiday, and the error has been perpetuated over the years.

Lay Bore Day is, like Fodder Day, another day celebrating the farmers. While Fodder Day celebrates those who grow grain, Lay Bore Day celebrates chicken farmers, who talk endlessly and boringly about which of their hens make the best layers (not cakes). Some chickens are rue stirs, who regret moving. Others are pull its, all of whom had uncles who knew the finger trick. Then there are capons, who are practicing to play Superman.
(cont'd tomw)