Yesterday

[da]

Yesterday was fun: dinner with good friends. bats22 is staying over the weekend. I had a lot of fun joking with him, chezmax, the_infamous_j, and melted_snowball about the annoying commercial holiday it happened to be, about robots with flamethrowers, and considering the PTO possibilities for a Mix-master.

d. made a wonderful meal including Jerk Chicken and Blood Orange Crepe Suzettes.

Ah, and my plane is boarding. Back Monday night!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Are there any holidays other than annoyingly commercial ones? I can't think of any major ones, whether religious or secular.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Yes. Actually, I really think this is the proof that MLK Day is not a real holiday. It will not be a real holiday until there are appliance sales on it. ("I have a dream! A dream of inexpensive washing machines!")

(I am actually almost serious.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Hmm, good catch. I suppose Flag Day would be another example. And neither one feels like a real holiday to me either: when enumerating holidays before commenting, neither one came to mind. Drat! I have been corrupted by the commercial side.

Every now and then I think it would be more interesting to create or adopt holidays that are completely disjointed from these sales holidays.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

That's because you're south of the border.

...Today (the 18th) is a brand new holiday in Ontario. I haven't heard a bit of commercial crap for "Family Day."

Ontario also has an August Civic Holiday. Entirely uncommercial.

In general, it's not quite as bad for some of the holidays: Thanksgiving, for example, isn't part of the Christmas Pileup, being in October (y'know, when a harvest festival makes sense.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Down here, Christmas comes pretty close to infringing on October -- at Disneyland they put up the tree and redecorate the day after Halloween.

Civic holidays sound like a good idea. I wonder if it evolved from the British bank holidays.

If I'm south of the border, does that mean I have to eat at *shudder* Taco Bell? Foodie God would not be pleased. There would be chalupas, but they would really awful ones.

[morgan-starfire.livejournal.com]

"Are there any holidays other than annoyingly commercial ones? I can't think of any major ones, whether religious or secular."

Beltane! (boing, boing) And May Day.

Samhain, too, now that I think of it; although Halloween is certainly commercial enough...

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

True -- I should have specified either federal holidays, or holidays that the majority of the population accepts. In the US, Guy Fawkes Day isn't much of a commercial holiday either. ;-)

I always liked the Oaxacan Day of the Radish holiday on December 23rd. They apparently take giant radishes and carve them.

[morgan-starfire.livejournal.com]

Hooray for subversive non-mainstream holidays!