"Exactly what makes this one happy?" 12-31-03

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I hate fake holidays. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and the like are not real holidays. The concept for each day is fine enough: Celebrate the greatest saints. Of course, that's not actually what happens with those holidays, but that's not my point. My point for this rant:

Even worse than celebrating a fake holiday is celebrating a fake holiday before it happens.

New Year's Day is perhaps the least most important holiday of the year. Other than the fact it reminds all of us that we finished another year of life without accomplishing our goals, it means nothing. It's just another day. Oh, it also means I get to put up my new Britney Spears calendar. That's really about it.

But I could deal with celebrating January 1. ON JANUARY FIRST! On what planet does it make sense to celebrate the day before the holiday? You don't see people shooting each other in the face with bottle rockets on July 3. Of course not. People have the common decency to wait until Independence Day - the day that recognizes our country's birth - to set off a roman candle in their hand. Emergency room visits on July 3rd are not patriotic, but on the 4th, NOW YOU'RE CELEBRATING!

But New Years freakin' EVE? EVE?! Half of my family celebrates Christmas Eve. Actually, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve for practical reasons. The other half celebrates on Christmas day, so that's a logistics thing. That doesn't count. That's akin to having a birthday party on the closest weekend to the actual birthday because people won't show up if you have it on a Tuesday. We get the idea. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't always born on a Monday. I'm not complaining about celebrating a holiday on the wrong day.

It's that people are celebrating a holiday that isn't real. Arbor Day is more of a holiday than New Year's Day, which makes New Year's Eve less important that Arbor Day Eve. Can any of you even name Arbor Day Eve? I could look it up and seem smart, but you'd all assume I looked it up anyway so I'm not going to waste my time.

Back to what I was saying before (I digress often), I can accept celebrating the New Year. But does it really make sense to celebrate the New Year on December 31st? Every goes out, dresses really nice, and most get totally wasted... and THEN comes the countdown.

But you don't live on the East Coast so YOU HAVE TO WAIT. NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR YOU!

When your time for blissful January arrives, everyone gets excited. People kiss, people yell "Happy New Year," and most people continue to kill as many brain cells in one night as humanely possible. But the celebration is over. People aren't really happy about the New Year anymore. The countdown is over. The celebration is over. The year is about 12 seconds old and 90% of the world doesn't care.