For the first time in my life, I was asked during the month of September what I was planning to do on Halloween. I responded that if I were asked the same question on October 30, I still wouldn't have an answer. The last time I dressed up for Halloween was senior year of high school.
The timing of this question was reminiscent of miscellaneous December holidays being promoted at department stores before Thanksgiving. Some people's lives seem to hinge on these holidays. People who ask me about my plans for the lesser holidays always seem to be nervous about their own lack of plans. It's like they're fishing for ideas.
"Oh, you're dressing up as the ass end of an antelope and doing a midnight 5K run sponsored by the Midnight Running Idiots for Cancer Association? That sounds cool. Maybe I'll join you."
Or, they need their ailing ego consoled:
"Thank God, you don't have any plans either. I feel much better about my own pathetic social life. Hopefully, I'll find something to do first, so I can be the one who's in the in crowd and you'll be the putz who's home watching TV."
It occurred to me that the only holiday I actually "celebrate" is Christmas. I mean Xmas. The only reason I "celebrate" it is because another group of people has chosen to do all the work involved in preparing for it, and the "celebration" consists of giving and receiving presents (a practice I failed miserably to give up one year) and eating a lot of good food.
I don't really consider these acts as constituting a celebration of Xmas. It's more of an excuse to see family I haven't seen for months even though they live in the same town. This is fine, and actually preferable to a real celebration, which would involve party hats and a birthday cake in the shape of a crucifix.
If you think about it, most holidays are just birthday parties for dead people. (In some cases, you walk around and pretend you're dead people.) To break up the monotony of holidays, it would be nice to celebrate people's deaths, rather than just their births. Easter comes close to this idea, but it unfortunately overshadows Good Friday. That's the real day worth celebrating.
I guess I don't really have a problem with celebrating the day of someone's birth, the problem is whose birth. Here's an idea. From this time forward, I hereby declare May 31 to be David Seinfeld Day. It's the midway point between April 29 (Jerry Seinfeld's birthday) and July 2 (Larry David's birthday). That birthday party's got to be better than Christ's.
