By Bill Woodruff —
Every year the Christmas shopping starts earlier.
This year the stores couldn”t wait for the Friday after Thanksgiving, so they opened up Thursday night. What”s next?
Maybe next year they will provide battery-driven shopping carts for everyone. Add a food tray and shoppers can stop at the cafeteria, load up and eat their Thanksgiving dinner while doing their Christmas shopping.
I hope they give out free marbles to all the shoppers, since they have apparently lost all of theirs.
Can”t we celebrate one holiday before starting the next one? If we”re going to go to extremes, let”s go all the way and restructure the holidays.
Most of them are arbitrary anyway.
New Years Day ? Why not have this on the first day of spring? The Romans messed up the 10-month calendar anyway when they added July and August, and they”re too hot.
This would leave Martin Luther King Jr.”s birthday the only holiday in January. Maybe everyone would actually celebrate it.
Presidents Day ? What a mess. It used to be we got Lincoln”s and Washington”s birthdays off. Now we have one day for all the Presidents. Really? Buchanan, A. Johnson, Nixon, W.H. Harrison? This proves that an I.Q. test isn”t required to run for Congress.
Valentines Day ? Keep it, but in all fairness, we need to have a day when men can torture women. Maybe Dude”s Day, when the women could buy us beer and sports tickets.
Easter ? A bunny that brings eggs?
Seriously? WWJD? I”m surprised He didn”t rise for the second time and give us a sermon.
Combine Arbor Day and Earth Day.
Plant trees and hug them.
Independence Day ? This could have started July 2, so let”s make it three days of picnics and fireworks.
Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Labor Day and Halloween are all OK, but they all need to be three-day weekends.
Mother”s Day is a month before Father”s Day. Someone needs a biology lesson.
Thanksgiving seems to be the big problem. It”s too close to Christmas. If you travel to see family on T-day and Christmas, then you go 11 months between visits. Let”s move Thanksgiving to the end of the school year and make it a real four-day holiday.
The kids would already be really thankful. The stores would eventually get six months of Christmas shopping and the economy would boom again.
It makes more sense than trying to move Christmas. Dec. 25 was a Roman pagan holiday for 300 years before the Church usurped it, but we”re too attached to it to change now.
Jesus was probably born in the spring, so we could really celebrate His birthday anytime, but some traditions should be left alone.
Santa, flying reindeer, flammable trees with electric lights indoors, it”s all mixed up already.
Why mess with perfect madness?
Bill Woodruff is a longtime Lake County resident and former business owner.
