Despite being housebound for most of the last 18 months, as our collective lives start to get back to a bit more day-to-day normalcy, it just might be time to add a new holiday to the calendar. I think it might not be such a bad idea to get ahead of the curve, and perhaps try creating a new annual celebration to fill in the lag between all the others. Full disclosure, I buy my party hats and noisemakers at Costco, so I may have an ulterior motive. Just sayin’…
So, we’ve already got the “biggies” – Christmas, Thanksgiving, Boxing Day, Wrestling Day (I think?) and Easter. There’s a few minor ones as well that don’t really close things down, like Halloween and your own personal birthday.
What I’m suggesting is a fall/early winter break to get one more precious day off throughout the year.
As long as we’re talking about fall, how about Rake Day? The day of the year you get paid time off to stay home and rake the leaves, or rototill your garden?
Not appealing? Well, before you pack away your ramshackle friend from his post out in the field, might we be able to dance festively around the tilled cornfield for Scarecrow Day? We could all wear floppy hats and patchwork clothing in solidarity with Mr. StrawHead, thereby paying tribute to the one that keeps food on our tables, to some degree? As long as he/she is effective in scaring away birds.
I may be a bit distracted from having The Price Is Right on in the background as I write this, but is it so wrong to consider minting an annual Have Your Pets Spayed And Neutered Day off? It’s not like vets keep convenient hours that allow us all to bring in our pets. A long weekend is entirely in order to say farewell to Rover’s dangly bits!
Okay, that last one may have been a stretch (or snip), so let’s consider Preserves Day, that time in the late fall that we should all get off from work to can homemade jams and jellies. Or pickle a beet or 20. Doesn’t one need a break from their relentless work grind to preserve cucumbers?
So you don’t garden – that’s okay. Surely you need a free day to put on storm windows or buy sugar, flour, horse feed and other provisions to get you through the long, cold winter? Ugh. I need to change the channel…I really like this episode of Little House On The Prairie.
Of course, we can have a fall holiday and not necessarily have it relate to the time of year. Is there any valid reason we can’t have a Beach Ball Frisbee Day every year or Train Your Dog To Cha Cha holiday?
I suppose that given how much all of our lives revolve around the tiny screens we hold in our hands, the best basis of all these suggestions for consideration would be to institute an annual Roll The Dice On Tik-Tok Fame For My Retirement Dollars Day – a terrific opportunity for both families and singles alike to come up with a viral video that will provide lucrative incomes well into our golden years.
All right, last one – how about an annual fall holiday in favour of Tracking Down & Capturing The Joker Day? Dagnab it, I really need to leave the TV off while I work on these columns…this classic Batman series really stands the test of time.
Humour columnist and author Dan St. Yves was licensed with Royal LePage Kelowna for 11 years. Check out his website at danstyves.com.
