Presidents' Day

When I've encountered British tourists in Europe, they tell me they're "on holiday," which surprises me as it's an etymologically suspect way of phrasing it, especially for the bearers of the native tongue.  "Holiday" is derived from holy day, and a fortnight in Torremolinos is hardly an observance of the divine.  Americans say we're "on vacation," which is correct, as we are temporarily vacating our homes and our jobs.

Whatever.  It's Presidents' Day today, also known as Washington's Birthday in honor of George Washington, who was born on a February 22. As Abraham Lincoln was born on a February 12, their birthdays have been combined into a  single Presidents' Day on the third Monday of each February to honor all U.S. presidents (even you-know-who).  

It's a holiday, but it isn't a holy day.  It's a celebration of nationalism, which is fine, which is fitting, which is appropriate.  But it's not a celebration of the divine.  Let's not kid ourselves.

There are plenty of religious holidays, just as there are plenty of religions.  However, in modern societies, those W.E.I.R.D. cultures (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), the religious holidays are becoming more and more secularized.  Christmas  has basically become a celebration of capitalism, a time of conspicuous consumption and gift-giving, and Easter has largely been reduced to a display of fashion.  

Halloween is becoming increasingly popular with every passing year. Here in Atlanta, in addition to the rite of trick-or-treating, it's celebrated with parades, parties, visits to haunted-house rides, movie screenings, and by wearing outrageous outfits to work one day a year, but few people anymore even know why it's a holiday or why it's observed on October 31.  It's just an excuse to party and get freaky for one night.

The holidays most cherished by people living in W.E.I.R.D. cultures are usually egocentric.  We celebrate our own birthdays, our weddings, and the anniversaries of our weddings.  We celebrate graduations and bar mitzvahs and other rites-of-passage (e.g., Sweet Sixteen).    We spend the most time and put our most celebratory energies into ourselves.

We usually don't recognize the annual occurrences of events bigger than ourselves.  We scarcely recognize summer and winter solstices or vernal and autumnal equinoxes.   The start and end of Daylight Savings Time, the so-called spring-forward and fall-back days, get more recognition, and those occurrences are usually despised more than celebrated.  Full and new moons are still depicted on most calendars, but other than astrologers and lycanthropes, nobody really gives them much consideration.  

If the holiday isn't specifically about us, our birth, our marriage, etc., or about our nation or our religion, we don't pay it much mind.  We don't celebrate monarch butterflies returning from their winters in Mexico or the passing of migratory birds.  Even though we even have a song about it, the celebration of the return of the swallows to Capistrano is really only celebrated in certain coastal Californian communities, mainly Capistrano.  We don't celebrate the return of salmon to the streams or the appearance of the first ripe pumpkin in the vineyard (the annual roll-out of Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte doesn't count). 

You might ask, "What about Groundhog Day?", to which I would reply, "Yeah, what about Groundhog Day?  Is there a holiday more out of touch with both science and nature than Groundhog Day?"

Instead of ourselves, and in addition to the solstices and equinoxes, we could celebrate those great events in intellectual history, say, the November 24, 1859 publication of The Origin of Species.  Instead of Presidents' Day, we could set aside the third Monday of each February to commemorate the February 19, 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.   

Zen Master Dogen wrote Bendowa, the first fascicle of his Shobogenzo, on October 1, 1231.  Coincidentally, that date is also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.  Reason enough right there for an annual October 1 holiday

We could celebrate June 15 for the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, or March 10 for Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone call in 1876. 

We can set aside August 30 of each year to observe the 1965 release of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, or September 10 to observe the 1999 premier of the movie Fight Club.  

We can celebrate February 12 each year, maybe even combine it with the third Monday of February anniversary of the publication of The Feminine Mystique, for the 1993 world premier of the movie Groundhog Day.  

Or better yet, we could observe each September 21 for Bill Murray's birthday.  In consideration of one of his films, we could call it St. Vincent's Day.  Annie Clark, who records under the name St. Vincent, was born on a September 28, so perhaps we should set aside the third Monday of September and call it St. Vincent's Day for both Bill Murray and Annie Clark.