An important President’s Day lesson: Explosions make everything better
This last Monday, I took the opportunity to sleep in a little, have breakfast with my friends and roommates and lounge around the house – all in the name of celebrating President’s Day.
This spare time gave me plenty of opportunities to ruminate on minor holidays like this one.
And while Columbus, Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidents like Washington and Lincoln have all made inestimable contributions to modern America, I have a hard time finding ways to celebrate those contributions.
The current order of things: a day without class, government offices or banking services, can hardly be called a celebration.
If Bingo was added to the list and I was collecting social security, the issue might have been debatable, but Bingo is absent on these pseudo-holidays and what is left is woefully inadequate.
The major holidays all have a few things in common. Overeating, presents, candy and explosives all seem to find their way into the more popular celebrations.
With this in mind, is it any wonder that at 4 years old, I could at any moment tell you the exact number of days and hours until Christmas, but now, even at 22, I confuse Columbus Day and Labor Day?
This is unacceptable. Even a precursory study of the labor movement reveals that, while overeating, presents and candy were often absent, explosives and mass rioting both played a prominent role.
So why are we content with closing the banks and the post offices when we have legitimate reason to celebrate Labor Day by picketing them?
Nothing says ‘party’ like a mass of humanity rioting in front of a bank and setting off the occasional pipe bomb.
These holidays weren’t always boring and I think that it’s time to resurrect the party. For starters, our President’s Day breakfast rules dictated that all in attendance must dress like their favorite president.
It didn’t work. In fact, once we got to thinking about it, even my roommates and I didn’t want to dress up for breakfast. But the morning hair phenomenon affected my sideburns, fluffed them out a little, and gave me the air of a young Martin Van Buren.
And though a failure, I feel like this President’s Day was a step in the right direction.
With all of the unkempt facial hair and unshowered folk in my kitchen, it was like a camping trip, and camping holds some serious party potential.
We’ve already begun to plan for a firework-filled Memorial Day. After all, it is attention to details like food and combustibles that will transform the holiday-lite into holiday delight.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. Having worked a government job in the past, I can confidently say that I appreciate the work of Columbus and his cohorts more than most. After all, I was paid to not work on their holidays.
This, my friends, is sweet. But, like any self-respecting visionary, I am looking to bring those sweet blessings to the masses, a la massive parties and a list of things that, for my editor’s sake, will remain nameless.
It won’t be easy, but I feel like it has to be done. So picket a bank, grow your sideburns, blow something up or simply ask yourself WWMVBD? (What would Martin Van Buren do?)
This may seem a little trivial, but we’re talking about doubling the number of real holidays in a calendar year.
And that, fellow citizens, is something worth celebrating.
Zach Pendleton is a senior is English. Comments can be sent to
zpendleton@cc.usu.edu