Category: Humor

This is a special time of year for me and my family. Presidents Day holds so much meaning and so many great memories for me even now as an adult.

When I was a kid, every year my brothers and I, with barely contained excitement and anticipation, would count down the days until that magical, magical day – Presidents Day!

And now that I have children and even grandchildren of my own, the wonder and excitement is still there.

Of course almost as great as Presidents Day was Presidents Day Eve for my brothers and me.

It was a treasured tradition in my family that every Presidents Day Eve my dad would dress up like Lincoln and my mom would put on her George Washington nose and wig and we would fill a thermos with sugared hot tea and drive through town looking for all the streets named after presidents so we could gaze at the street signs all lit up by the glittering street lights.

Then, after we came home, us kids would get ready for bed.

But we could barely sleep. Because the next day was Presidents Day and we knew that while we slept the current President, LBJ or Nixon at the time, would come to our house and hide one and five dollar bills for all good children.

And oh what a glorious morning every Presidents Day morning was! We’d get up at 5:00 AM and search for the bills with Washington and Lincoln pictures on them.

Yeah, we knew we were just lower middle class kids and that some rich kids were probably finding Jeffersons and even Franklins (even though he was never a President). But it didn’t matter, we were just thrilled that another Presidents Day was finally here!

We’d spend the day enjoying our ones and fives while mom and dad lounged around in their pajamas drinking more sugared tea and preparing the big Presidents Day dinner, usually followed up with a dessert consisting of a chocolate cake shaped like the Whitehouse.

To cap off the evening dad would read the Gettysburg Address or Washington’s Second Inaugural Address. Then to bed we’d go and start the countdown for next year.

On this Presidents Day, as I think back on those happy days, I can’t help but be a little sad. Presidents Day has become so commercial and shallow.

It’s just a paid government holiday and excuse to have a Presidents Day Sale at mattress stores.

So I guess my biggest wish this Presidents Day is that we all take a moment to reflect and try to keep ‘President’ in Presidents Day. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but it feels good and sounds sincere.

Oh, and I’m sure that many folks are relieved, and many disappointed as well, knowing that it’s Biden, not Trump, who will be sneaking into your house on Presidents Day Eve and hiding Lincolns and Washingtons for the next four years…maybe.

     

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There’s an idea floating around about the possibility of combining holidays or making one universal holiday.

The latter has something to do with the notion that it’s unfair that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ but not Buddha, Mohammed, Mother Gaia, the Universe, the Great Spirit, Satan, some goats, rocks and trees, tacos, or the 100,000 other ‘deities’ worshiped at one time or another by one group or another.

But if this time of year became just one universal holiday to include all of the above, the atheists and secular humanists would feel left out because it would still look like a ‘religious’ holiday. And what would we call it? Coincidencemas, Bigbangtide, or Indifferent-meaningless-empty-vacuummas? I don’t think it would work. What would the greeting cards say?

So, the better idea would be to combine the already-existing seasonal holidays into one, just get ’em all out of the way in one swell foop. We could call it either Thanksmasoween or Hallowthanksmas.

The celebration for Hallowthanksmas (the name I prefer) would consist of kids dressed up like turkeys or Pilgrims loudly singing “Silent Night” while going house to house with their parents begging neighbors and strangers alike for mash potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie.

To top off the evening the whole family would gather around a beautiful skeleton with a star on stop, drink some apple cider in reindeer shaped mugs, then decorate the skeleton with bright orange garland and pieces of grandma’s fruitcake.

Then everyone would watch 12 straight hours of football before snuggling into bed, anxiously waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come down the chimney with presents for all. Does that sound fun or what? Plus, it saves time and reduces holiday stress!

Now we need to work on ideas for combining New Years, Valentines Day and the Fourth of July into one stress-reducing holiday. I don’t know…maybe start a traditional celebration of drinking too much and throwing firecrackers at your sweetheart?

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