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| American for reference |
It's Independence Day, which is one of the 10 Federal Holidays. I've always been confused about federal holidays, because in my mind the ranking of most important holidays is something like:
1. Christmas
2. Easter
3. Thanksgiving
4. The Fourth of July
5. Halloween (which might be higher on your list if you're a child, like the horror genre, or have friends to party with)
6. New Year's Eve
7. Mother's Day and Father's Day equally... in that order.
8. Valentines Day (which might be higher on your list if like you're not allergic to red food dye)
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| What's your favorite Pagan holiday. Comment Below. |
But the really official holidays (the one's that "non-essential" government workers like the lady at the DMV, health inspectors, and Nick Saban all get the day off for) are Federal Holidays. Since Federal Holidays are voted on by congress, these are the holidays of historical importance that the government recognizes as legitimate. Most schools and businesses use this as a framework for deciding which holidays to recognize themselves, which is why you probably got out of school on federal holidays even if you went to a private school.
So here's the list of all Federal Holidays:
1. New Year's Day
2. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
3. President's Day/ G Dubs's Bday
4. Memorial Day
5. Independence Day
6. Labor Day
7. Veterans Day
8. Thanksgiving
9. Christmas Day
Some of these make sense to me... Actually just Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Independence Day make sense to me, because those are holidays of historic and cultural significance that people actually celebrate; the rest are really confusing.
"But New Year's Day is a real holiday people celebrate." No it isn't, and no they don't. Nobody does anything on New Year's Day. New Year's EVE is when you actually celebrate. I guess letting people not work on the 1st helps facilitate partying hard the night before, but that also enables people to start their actual first morning of the year lazily sleeping in and probably hung over.
From there the list get's... less culturally significant. The quote "holidays" with no traditions or rituals, but a vague command to "honor" some group. Look, I don't want to be the one to say it, but our culture doesn't exactly do much to help out living veterans when they come home from war OR honor our fallen. Why do we have two full holidays dedicated to thanking them? There are about 120,000 homeless vet's right now, and 5 times as many unemployed vets. The vast majority of homeless people are veterans, and when funds are tight in the government, veterans are the first people we screw over, yet our calendar says we care as much about veterans as Christmas and Thanksgiving combined! I don't think so.
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| I don't know |
I don't even know what we're supposed to pretend to honor by not working on Labor Day. That's not even a joke. I really don't know. [one Google search later] So, it's legitimately just a holiday to honor every American worker? That doesn't even make sense. I mean, millionare CEO's and drug dealers both part of the labor force. Are we honoring the working class or just everyone who ever works? Does it matter? Absolutely not. Pointless holiday.
SIDE NOTE: At the time Labor Day was demanded by striking workers in like the 19th Century, it was probably a bigger deal for the government to give people one day off, but now Americans are working an average of 34 hours a week, and we've got more jobs than people willing and able to work. We can get rid of this nonsense holiday now!
President's Day is another one of those that no one seems to know what to do with. The only conversation I've ever had about President's went like this.
Me: "Hey look, it's President's Day today"
Math teacher: "Actually it's been changed to indigenous people's day"
Me: "Oh, um, Okay."
I didn't correct him, but I'm pretty sure he was thinking of Columbus Day, since President's Day is about honoring George Washington and optionally Abraham Lincoln. I can't think of anything less controversial or less interesting than that.
SIDE NOTE 2: Yes I keep a detailed memory of the exact conversation every time I've ever been right but wasn't able to demonstrate that I was right dating back to kindergarden. Why? No idea. That's a question for another day for my therapist.
The really weird holidays, the ones I've saved to the end of this list, are Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Columbus Day. Why are these the only TWO people in American history we think are worth celebrating? I understand that Congress made up all these fake holidays for free political points with different voting blocks, but let's put that aside for a minute. Colombo was a Catholic boi from Italy who sailed to the Americas on a Spanish ship and discovered that there's a whole continent over here. He did some good things and a lot of bad things and he's super controversial. If you're currently getting worked up that I'm "downplaying" X-thing you think he did, you're probably thinking of an oversimplification of history that was spoon-fed to you. Pretty much everything about Colombo from his ethnicity to whether or not the maps he used were the best available to him is a matter of contentious, pretentious debate. When Columbus Day started he was seen as less of a person and more of a symbol of Catholicism and Immigration, and the new holiday actually angered anti-immigrant groups. Now he's become more of a symbol of "white people" and colonization, which means a lot of bad things that happened when Westerners colonized the America's get's pinned squarely on my boy Colombo's shoulders. Several states have re-branded Columbus Day as "Indigenous People's Day", which ironically also angers modern anti-immigration groups.
Honestly, I'm fine with celebrating Native American History, but most of the people who call is "Indigenous People's Day" spend the day crapping on Columbus's legacy with exaggerated tales of how evil he was. At that point, why not still call it Columbus Day, since he's still the focus. Idk.
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| Fourth Result When I Googled Indigenous People's Day |
In sharp contrast we've got my boy Martin Luther King, Jr. the activist who everyone in America thinks shared their personal politics. He's become a symbol of anti-racism who is often cited by the anarchist-left for saying saying "you can't have capitalism without racism" and by the anti-immigration-right for his whole "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" quote, which they apply to modern anti-white discrimination or as advocating for merit-based college acceptance and immigration systems. All I know is that whatever you think Martin Luther King, Jr. believed he probably wasn't the perfect American Gandhi that he symbolizes and he probably didn't believe all the same things as you.
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| Image barely related to the topic to break up the monotony of these paragraphs |
OKAY!
1. New Year's Eve: Dec 31. Workers can get their butts out of bed and work on New Year's Day!
2. Anti-Racism Quotes out of Context Day: January 20. Honored the same way we honor the legacy of MLK.
3. Two President's Day feb 17. Now at least it's clear which ones we are honoring
4. Valentine's Day: February 14 (actual holiday)
5. Memorial Day: May 1. Honored by congress annually building actual memorials or sending money to families of the fallen or doing literally anything to honor those who paid the ultimate price (social media posts don't count).
6. Fourth: July 4.
7. Veterans Day: August 1. Honor living Veterans by thanking them for their service (mostly on social media).
8. Thanksgiving Day: September 1.
9. Disadvantaged Veterans Day: October 1. Honored by actually doing something to help Veterans. (for example, maybe volunteer at a homeless shelter for your day off).
10. Halloween: Oct 31. (actual holiday)
11. Black Friday: The 4th Friday in November. I feel that moving Thanksgiving back to August spaces out the holidays better, but we still need an official start to the Christmas season. I also think separating Black Friday and Thanksgiving brings back the magic in both holidays.
12. Christmas: Dec 25 (actual holiday).
I think my nation changing list speaks for itself. I changed the dates on some holidays to space them out better and make the date easier to remember.
Thanks for reading.
Happy Fourth.
-The Noah.
(Editorial Note. I don't think Easter, Mother's Day, or Father's Day should be national holidays partially because they fall on Sundays.)
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