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?
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
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)
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)
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Passover Perfectionist
A New Thought Christian now, I was born Jewish, so I'm mindful that we're mere days away from the Passover holiday...which is what this story is about. Or rather, about a Passover fiasco.
Although I didn’t come from a religious family, I myself became an observant Jew in my pre-teen years, and I tried to follow many of the precepts of my religion to the letter. Coming from a Reform Jewish background, I felt no need to observe the laws of Kashruth (keeping Kosher), but I did feel the holidays needed to be observed correctly.
My mother, on the other hand, was always trying to make the religion easier for me. When she told me that, as Reform Jews, we were only required to observe Passover for seven days, not eight, I thought that was just another sneaky rule that my mom had made up to let me slide. It wasn’t till she spotted the rabbi walking down one of our community’s main streets, dragged me out of the car, and stood me face to face with him, then asked him how many days we were required to observe Passover, that I believed her.
At home, in my childhood, my mother would keep matzo in the house for the duration of Passover, but she never went through the ritual cleansing of the house, throwing out any bread, flour, and other non-Pesadich products, as is mandated by the religion and performed by the more observant Jews. As I grew older and more observant, I demanded that my mother rid the house of all the no-no products. She dragged her heels at first, capitulating only when she saw how set I was on being the best Jew I could. I suspect she didn’t actually throw anything out, though; my mother was far too economical for that. I have a strong hunch that the flour, bread crumbs, and other chometz found a temporary home at my grandmother’s house till the holiday was over.
The Passover seder (in-home religious service, which dinner is a part of) calls for each participant to drink four glasses of wine during the course of the service. In my youngest years, I was given grape juice instead; as I got a little older, my mother allowed me to drink real wine, but she said God would not think ill of me for drinking four fourths of a glass, rather than four glasses, at my age.
I was 14 the year that my dad died. He died in the spring, right before Passover, and my mother’s best friend invited us to celebrate the first night of Passover at her home, so my mom wouldn’t have to make a seder while coping with her grief and shock. Now, Janice observed Passover more in the spirit than the letter, a fact I didn’t yet realize but was soon to find out. The requisite matzos were on the table, along with the ceremonial objects such as a roasted lamb bone, salt water, an egg, and the apple-wine-nut concoction called charoseth, meant to symbolize the mortar the enslaved Israelites were forced to use in constructing Pharaoh’s pyramids. So far, so good.
The trouble came when the main course was served. It was a roast chicken, with stuffing, and I tasted the stuffing hesitantly. I’d had “bread stuffing” made with matzo before…and the less said about it, the better. But to my surprise, my mother’s friend’s stuffing was good! “Janice, this bread stuffing is great!” I enthused. “What did you put into it?”
“Bread,” she answered matter-of-factly.
I don’t think it was very mannerly of me to spit out my mouthful of chometzdich bread stuffing as I did, but I felt both poisoned and betrayed. I was trying so hard to be a good Jew…and my mother’s best friend had stabbed me in the back.
That was also the year I decided that I’d be a better Jew if I literally drank four glasses of wine, as prescribed for the service, rather than the four fourths my mother had always let me slide with. “Are you sure?” my mother asked skeptically. Yes, I was sure…and I went ahead and downed the first glass without a problem.
I don’t remember if I was on the second glass or the third when the wave of dizziness hit me; I only remember that I found it necessary to excuse myself from the seder table and go lie down on the living room sofa. My attempt to be a better Jew resulted in my missing the whole rest of the seder. I was still lying down on the sofa, the room spinning around me, when my mother came into the room to collect me and take me home some time after dinner.
It’s probably just as well that I missed the rest of dinner, though. After the stuffing fiasco, heaven only knows what was in the remainder of the food.
Although I didn’t come from a religious family, I myself became an observant Jew in my pre-teen years, and I tried to follow many of the precepts of my religion to the letter. Coming from a Reform Jewish background, I felt no need to observe the laws of Kashruth (keeping Kosher), but I did feel the holidays needed to be observed correctly.
My mother, on the other hand, was always trying to make the religion easier for me. When she told me that, as Reform Jews, we were only required to observe Passover for seven days, not eight, I thought that was just another sneaky rule that my mom had made up to let me slide. It wasn’t till she spotted the rabbi walking down one of our community’s main streets, dragged me out of the car, and stood me face to face with him, then asked him how many days we were required to observe Passover, that I believed her.
At home, in my childhood, my mother would keep matzo in the house for the duration of Passover, but she never went through the ritual cleansing of the house, throwing out any bread, flour, and other non-Pesadich products, as is mandated by the religion and performed by the more observant Jews. As I grew older and more observant, I demanded that my mother rid the house of all the no-no products. She dragged her heels at first, capitulating only when she saw how set I was on being the best Jew I could. I suspect she didn’t actually throw anything out, though; my mother was far too economical for that. I have a strong hunch that the flour, bread crumbs, and other chometz found a temporary home at my grandmother’s house till the holiday was over.
The Passover seder (in-home religious service, which dinner is a part of) calls for each participant to drink four glasses of wine during the course of the service. In my youngest years, I was given grape juice instead; as I got a little older, my mother allowed me to drink real wine, but she said God would not think ill of me for drinking four fourths of a glass, rather than four glasses, at my age.
I was 14 the year that my dad died. He died in the spring, right before Passover, and my mother’s best friend invited us to celebrate the first night of Passover at her home, so my mom wouldn’t have to make a seder while coping with her grief and shock. Now, Janice observed Passover more in the spirit than the letter, a fact I didn’t yet realize but was soon to find out. The requisite matzos were on the table, along with the ceremonial objects such as a roasted lamb bone, salt water, an egg, and the apple-wine-nut concoction called charoseth, meant to symbolize the mortar the enslaved Israelites were forced to use in constructing Pharaoh’s pyramids. So far, so good.
The trouble came when the main course was served. It was a roast chicken, with stuffing, and I tasted the stuffing hesitantly. I’d had “bread stuffing” made with matzo before…and the less said about it, the better. But to my surprise, my mother’s friend’s stuffing was good! “Janice, this bread stuffing is great!” I enthused. “What did you put into it?”
“Bread,” she answered matter-of-factly.
I don’t think it was very mannerly of me to spit out my mouthful of chometzdich bread stuffing as I did, but I felt both poisoned and betrayed. I was trying so hard to be a good Jew…and my mother’s best friend had stabbed me in the back.
That was also the year I decided that I’d be a better Jew if I literally drank four glasses of wine, as prescribed for the service, rather than the four fourths my mother had always let me slide with. “Are you sure?” my mother asked skeptically. Yes, I was sure…and I went ahead and downed the first glass without a problem.
I don’t remember if I was on the second glass or the third when the wave of dizziness hit me; I only remember that I found it necessary to excuse myself from the seder table and go lie down on the living room sofa. My attempt to be a better Jew resulted in my missing the whole rest of the seder. I was still lying down on the sofa, the room spinning around me, when my mother came into the room to collect me and take me home some time after dinner.
It’s probably just as well that I missed the rest of dinner, though. After the stuffing fiasco, heaven only knows what was in the remainder of the food.
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