Re-Drawing the Calendar

Whoever came up with this calendar was a real bozo. It probably was some Roman emperor so I guess he’s dead as a doornail and I’m safe calling him a bozo. You really gotta be careful who you call a bozo nowadays, people get pretty touchy.

At any rate, whichever bozo arranged things this way never had to close out the year end books and return Christmas presents the same week. As a recovering accountant I have always dreamed of re-doing the calendar.

All the holidays are in the wrong month. Like Christmas. I’ve been reading that Jesus wasn’t really born in December. In all probability he was born in the spring when those shepherds were outdoors watching their flocks. Shepherds don’t keep their sheep in open fields in the winter, I guess. Makes sense to me. The December date was picked when early Christians got nervous because the pagans were having a blast celebrating the winter solstice in mid-December and they wanted to have some fun, too. So they promoted Christmas to a major holiday and invented Santa Claus and malls.

Christmas belongs in spring. We’d have to give up snowmen and reindeer pulling sleds. But we could have some great barbecues.

The other advantage of moving Christmas to spring is to get more time for the accountants to get stuff done. We don’t need any fun holidays in December to distract anyone. The accountants need for all the worker bees to be in the office and have their minds on end of the year adjustments and getting the data correct. For myself, when I was working in accounting, I never really minded working on New Years Day. That holiday never meant much to me since we’re not what anybody in their senses would call party animals. I never stayed up late and I never cared about the football games. I actually wanted to come to work on January 1. It was my best day of the year. I was always the only person in the building. I had all the numbers to myself and they couldn’t jump around on me. Plus-- here’s the heavenly side of it—all the year-to-date calculations were so easy on January 1st. Can you imagine anything nicer?

Valentines Day is in wrong place also…strapless dresses to the high school Sweetheart Dance in snow? July 4th in such heat? I say we should get the holidays out of the extreme weather and into times we can really enjoy ourselves. Here’s my suggestions:

January- Let’s turn Martin Luther King Day into something more. Maybe an international brotherhood day when people of different cultures can celebrate our differences and eat each other’s exotic foods. Every holiday has it own food. November and December have turkey. July has hotdogs. Maybe January could have eggrolls, baklava, pizza and fried chicken.

February- I guess we could leave Valentines Day here but it can get pretty icy and all those high school kids are driving to the Sweetheart Dance in the dark and the girls are wearing next to nothing to this dance. What happens if there’s a wreck and she has to stand outside and flag down a ride?

March – Currently, March does not have any holiday. That’s a waste. Move Christmas here. We’ll have more time and better weather.

April- Does anybody really know how we time Easter? I think it has something to do with the moon. I used to think it keyed off Passover (the Last Supper was a Passover meal). But, last year, I think, Passover happened after Easter. I asked all the preachers and Jews I know and nobody had an answer. One word of caution, however: keep it away from April 15. We don’t want anyone traveling out of town when they need to be doing their taxes.

May- only has Mothers Day and Memorial Day. Memorial Day is OK here but it rains a lot in May. Let’s move Mothers Day (see September)

June- nothing here but Fathers Day yet the weather is perfect for picnics. Move Labor Day to June. Maybe we could even move the presidential election to June. June is too great a month to waste on vacations.

July- I propose we eliminate holidays in July and August. The weather is far too horrible then.

Aug- we don’t need any holidays here. The weather is awful. However, my ex-sister-in-law always takes August 8th off work. She declared this her own personal holiday when Nixon resigned and she hasn’t missed a celebration since that year. There’s no reason you couldn’t do it, too.

September- We could move Mothers Day and Fathers Day to September and call it a generic “Cool Parents Day” or “Respected Old People Day”. That way we could celebrate the grandparents who are raising children while the parents serve time in jail.

Oct- Nothing much happens here except for Halloween. The weather in October is far too nice to waste it. We could move another holiday here. Maybe Mothers Day or Fathers Day.

Nov- Keep Thanksgiving in November. We need the fallen leaves to decorate the table.

Dec- we could keep this month free by moving Christmas to March. People could use the entire month to balance their checkbooks. Or take some time to learn how to cook Baklava.

Now, these changes are only a start. Send me your suggestions and we’ll consider them. I say 2006 is the year we re-vamp the calendar to make some sense. It’s time for a few well-considered changes. I’ll admit I haven’t put too much thought into this but someone needs to. Our calendar is a mess.