Holiday Crush

Wow.  Here it is, another night before another 4 day holiday.  It seems like I just had a 4 day holiday.  And do you know why that is?  Because I DID just have a 4 day holiday.  Just last week!  Now I know that this is just fine and dandy with a lot of people, but it really does me no good because I make my living as a contractor.  And when contractors go on a forced holiday, they don't get paid.  But I guess that's my fault for not having a regular job like everyone else, where you actually get paid holidays and paid vacations and dental and medical and all the office supplies you can steal ...  Fucking economy anyway.

Seriously though, there is something totally fucked up about this time of year.  There are too many holidays all crammed together in just over the space of one month. And after all of the joy and the good tidings, and the food, and the booze, and the perpetual hangover, you extrude out the other end of it staring Old Man Winter straight in the eye, with no respite in sight until the last damn day in May.

That is unless you get totally bullshit holidays like Casimir Pulaski Day, or Presidents Day, or Washington's Birthday, or St. Valentines Day off.  And maybe you get Good Friday off if you can dig up your Christian-in-Good-Standing membership card and show it to your boss.  I once worked for a place that would give you Good Friday off if you swore up and down on a stack of Bibles that you were actually going to church.  The guy who held my job before me did so swear, but he went golfing instead.  And when he showed up on Monday with a sunburn (the sun had been out Friday ... Rain Saturday and Sunday), they actually fired his ass!  True story.

Anyway, as I was saying, you get these great holidays all jammed together in a little over one month, and then you go back to work.  It's cold, it's snowing, you're depressed and suicidal.  It's just not a fun time.

Let's look at a year's worth of REAL holidays and see where they hit.  January, May, July, September, November and December.  That leaves SIX FUCKING MONTHS with no holiday time in them!  This has to be fixed and I have the solution.  And no one less than the President of the United States and Congress can make this happen.  They all get their heads together and make sure that there is at least one holiday per month that is important enough so that everyone gets it off.

Here's my proposal, month by month:

January - New Years Day.  There's no way of changing this around unless we want the earth to spin off it's axis and the universe to fly apart like the rotary engine in a 1972 Chevy Vega.

February - Presidents Day.  Why do we honor only two presidents?  There are 44 of them.  That ought to be worth a four day weekend.

March - Christmas.  Let's face it.  No one knows when Jesus was born.  Someone drew a slip of paper out of a hat 2,000 years ago and called it December.  It can just as easily be March.  Another four day weekend.

April - Easter.  The birth and the death of Christ ... back to back.  Neat and tidy, and good for four days.

May - Memorial Day.  Already there.  Cool beans.

June - Not much happened except D-Day in 1944.  But that was a pretty big deal at the time, and when you combine it with Memorial Day in May, and Independence Day in July, you've got a patriots trifecta!  Good for another four days.

July - Independence Day.  And we all know that there are just as many drunken parties and tragic fireworks related accidents on the 3rd as there are on the 4th, so let's have Independence Day Eve AND Independence Day!

August - Shit, this is a hard one.  Nothing historically earth shattering happened.  But it's the month that WOODSTOCK was held in upstate New York in 1968! That's got to be good for at least one holiday!

September - Labor Day.

October - Halloween, of course!  I can't believe this is not a national holiday already, so the sooner it becomes official, the better.

November - Thanksgiving.  "Nuff said.

December - Okay, we moved Christmas, but there are still other religious events to celebrate like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.  Both of these put together ought to be good for at least a month of "feel good" days and at least 4 solid days off from work.

There.  That was so incredibly simple, I can't believe no one has thought of it before.  But there's no time to waste.  If we start writing letters to our congresspeople now and lighting up the switchboard at the White House, we can be sitting here next year at this time ... looking at a simply marvelous 2011 filled with great, well spaced holidays.

And please ... no thank you's are needed.  Your smiling faces are thanks enough!