Holidays on Our Minds

We have special days. We have them as tributes for tradition, for the spirit of continuity. We also observe these days for the memory. These special days, these holidays, can even give us a sense of renewal.

Holidays, which began as religious commemorations, now mean either those special days of observance and celebration or a vacation that involves travel and leisure.

December is replete with holidays of observance; it may as well be called the Holiday Month. For Christendom, there is of course Christmas, whose approach is anticipated as early as November in our country. It is as though we look forward to Christmas as the most important day that follows All Soul’s Day.

But there is more to December’s holidays aside from the Christian world’s important day. The month was begun with World Aids Day. This was meant to muster support for the estimated 33 million people living with the dread disease and for all sectors of society to understand this scourge.

The United Arab Emirates celebrated its national day with great fanfare by the second of the month, in commemoration of the formal federation of its emirates to form one united country back in 1967. It was a sight to behold an Arab parade, led by the police mounted on those prized Arabian horses.  And there were those small schoolchildren in white robes waving Emirati flags led by female teachers in black robes.

The world’s Jewry observes Hanukkah from December 4 to 12. This eight-day celebration is in honor of the victorious revolt of the Maccabees against the Syrians in 165 B.C. Tradition has it that lamp oil burned in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem for eight days despite its estimated capacity to burn for only one night, thus the eight-day celebration.

The Netherlands observes Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) Day on the fifth of the month, while the USA has Pearl Harbor Day on the seventh.

The world observes December 10 as Human Rights Day. Naturally, by this time the festive air will usher in the 12 days of Christmas, up to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with New Year’s Eve not far behind.  And as we all know, our country observes Rizal Day the day before New Year’s Eve.
Religious observances for the month have the Immaculate Conception on the 8th and the Virgin of Guadalupe on the 12th, which is a day of importance for Mexico. St. Lucy’s feast day follows a day after.

It is amazing that the day after Christmas Day is also Boxing Day.  This isn’t as amazing as the Wear Brown Shoes Day though.  Whoever are the adherents of this observance seem to have marked December 4 as a brown-letter day instead of a red-letter day.  Or, to be more precise, let the word ‘letter’ in this idiom be replaced with ‘shoe.’ A brown-shoe day doesn’t sound so unacceptable.

They may be on the fringes, but celebrants of wacky and weird holidays don’t seem to mind that theirs aren’t observed nationally or internationally nor recognized by the UN like the Aids. So who are those who celebrate the Festival for the Souls of Dead Whales on December 10?

Eat your heart out, food haters.  There is National Cotton Candy Day, National Lemon Cupcake Day, National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, Oatmeal Muffin Day, and Hamburger Day, respectively on December 7, 15, 16, 19, and 21.

Battery manufacturers must be glad for December 21 as well. There are those who celebrate the day as National Flashlight Day.

Every dog has his day, it is said, and the underdogs among us are no exception. There is the Underdog Day on December 17. Could this be one day in the year when the underdogs become top dogs?

For the difficult to please, there is the National Whiners Day the day after Christmas. It has the same date as Boxing Day. I wonder how the world would be if rabid adherents of these two observances get to meet in a scrimmage.

The month’s end also sees celebrants of the Festival of Enormous Changes At The Last Minute Day on the 30th and the Unlucky Day on the 31st. Whatever the reasons are for these strange observances, at least they are reason enough to celebrate. And to have a holiday, if nothing else.

(9 Dec 2007)