Holiday Traditions

Halloween is over, but people are still living it. I was in San Francisco last night and saw plenty of folks still dressed in their hobo costumes.

My daughter went out last Tuesday dressed up as the invisible girl; I haven't seen her since.

When the kids say"trick or treat", I opt for the trick - I take their bags of candy and slam the door. We didn't get any kids coming to our house this year.

Halloween makes me think of the grand traditions we all have around holidays in the U.S.

Halloween

First of all is the old tradition of eviscerating a bunch of inedible vegetables and leaving them on the porch to rot.

Then there's the tradition overdosing kids on candy right before bedtime, a tradition obviously not invented by parents.

There is also the tradition of this holiday being scary. But somehow the image of a 6 year old in a $9.99 plastic mask from Target doesn't quite do it. Maybe that's why some folks in the Castro decided to shoot a few people this year? It scared me, anyway.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming up this month. This is a holiday where I guess we're celebrating stealing the other guys' land? Dead birds? Obesity?

And who thought up the idea of a holiday on a Thursday?

Christmas

Christmas is a great celebration of single-motherhood, and God as a deadbeat Dad. I guess that means the presents are gifts in lieu of child support?

Of course there's nothing strange about Christmas traditions, with a fat man in a flying sleigh pulled by deer.

I personally love the tradition of spending an entire weekend putting up decorations that you have to spend another entire weekend taking back down next month. You're creating work for yourself as you're doing work. It's like raking leaves onto your lawn so that you will have something to rake off of it.

The best Christmas tradition, though, is the tree lights. We have these strings of lights that are very convenient, assuming you can untangle them, except that one single bulb always goes out somewhere and takes down the entire string, and you can never chase down the bulb and never have a replacement even if you do. But better than this tradition is the pre-electricity version of it, where people put lit candles on the branches. Who came up with that one? "Right - light the candle, put it on that branch under that other branch. It'll be fine! Let's go eat dinner. ... Your house burned down? How'd that happen?!"

New Years

This has to be the silliest holiday, simply celebrating one day turning into the next. Noone can figure out what else to do with the holiday, so we just drink heavily.

Passover

Passover is, from what I can figure out, celebrating bad food and hard times.

Easter

Easter is always a happy time, where we celebrate the original Dawn of the Dead.
I'm not sure how this got us to a bunny distributing eggs and candy.

Memorial Day and Labor Day

I can never keep these holidays straight; they're just the two generic Monday holidays.

July 4th, Independence Day

This is a wonderful holiday, celebrating that critical point in American history when we stood up to England and said, "We don't need your corrupt politicians anymore; we have enough of our own!"