My Favorite Holiday by Gillian

Well, I titled my Halloween story Bah Humbug on a Broomstick, and that just about says it all. Bah Humbug on the Xmas Star and the Fireworks of the Fourth and on the End of Summer Labor Day Picnic.

Bah Humbug on Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Flag Day, not from lack of respect for those who deserve remembrance but for lack of respect for those whose only purpose on these days is to go thousands of dollars into debt to save five hundred dollars on that house-high plasma TV that nobody needs.

Bah Humbug for sure on New Year’s Ridiculous Resolutions, and Bah Humbug on the Cuddly Easter Bloody Bunny and his multicolored eggs. Has no one, incidentally, ever noticed the total disconnect between rabbits and eggs?

And one collective resounding Bah Humbug for all those additional holidays our Government (and Bah Humbug there too, while I’m at on a roll) apparently feels obligated to provide, if only to give themselves another day off.

Presidents’ Day? I don’t know about other parts of the country but in Colorado that is one of the busiest ski weekends of the year. Is one single person shushing down the slopes mulling over the significance of even one President, never mind all of them?

Columbus Day, for God’s sake. What’s that about, other than flipping a government-sanctioned bird at all our Native Peoples?

The memory of Martin Luther King, a man deserving of national reverie, would, in my never humble opinion, be better served simply by an MLK Day, as opposed to a holiday. If you look up the definition of the word holiday all the answers specify a day free from work, which in fact most U.S. holidays for most people are not, or a day set aside for leisure and recreation, even festivity; no mention of contemplation, significance, history, sacrifice, peace and love, which is what we should be involved with in reference to King.

Even if you try to remain true to the original intent of holidays, though I wonder if most of us have a clue what that would be in many cases, they always seem to be the worst example of emotions to order. On this day you will feel this, on that day that, and by the way you are religious on Christmas and Easter quite regardless of the fact that you never set foot in any House of Worship the rest of the year.

I guess I just do better with spontaneous emotions than those ordered up by calendar dates.

However, I doubt the lack of my participation is going to change anything so in the spirit of the thing I recommend our next addition should be a gay holiday for us all to celebrate our queerness.

We’ll call it Bah Hum-bugger Day.

© 21 November 2011

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.