(Image via the awesome Toothpaste for Dinner)
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Despite the image above, I don’t find Valentine’s Day any more depressing than any other bogus, entirely commercialized holiday – it’s easy enough to ignore, and if there’s one thing we’ve gotten good at in life it’s ignoring shit that other people like (y’know, like elections and the Grammys).
That said, I want to make sure you know exactly how I feel about Valentine’s Day in relation to the rest of the holidays – that means it’s time for a list! The rules are fairly arbitrary, but I’m going to mostly stay away from religious holidays, and I will include a bunch that aren’t federal but are fairly widely known. Let’s get started!
- Christmas — There’s no doubt this is a religious holiday, and there’s no doubt that this one is like, the epitome of commercialism. Still, the holiday revolves around exchanging presents, eating ridiculous food and desserts, spending time with the people closest to you and enjoying about a solid month’s worth of people at work not taking their jobs seriously. What’s not to love??
- Thanksgiving — Thanksgiving is what you get when you take Christmas and replace the presents with even more delicious food. I seriously do not get how people don’t make turkey, gravy, potatoes and stuffing throughout the year – that shit is delicious no matter what. Plus there’s football on all day! Fuck I wish it was November.
- St. Patrick’s Day — What’s that? The original intent of this holiday has been totally corrupted by American society over time? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the Irish car bombs my friends and I just slammed down. St. Patrick’s Day encourages you to drink green beer and Irish whiskey like it’s the end of the world, meaning one of my favorite hobbies is socially acceptable for a day. Success!
- Halloween — My top four choices are all based on indulgence, irresponsibility and hedonism – this is not an accident. Halloween is one of the rare holidays that has great appeal across a lot of age ranges: when you’re a kid you stockpile comical amounts of candy and when you’re in high school/college you go to sexy drunken Halloween parties (and stockpile comical amounts of candy). It’s like Christmas for debaucherous people.
- New Year’s Eve — I would have put this higher, because there’s a lot of good things: time off work, drunken revelry with friends, etc. But the actual day itself features plenty of bullshit media coverage, the bars all have INSANE cover charges, and the real action doesn’t even begin until midnight – still a lot of fun, but not without its drawbacks.
- Independence Day — A true patriot would have put this first, am I right??
But seriously, I love BBQs and all, but fireworks are a HUGE waste of money and not even all that exciting to watch. If you want to throw away that much money, why not donate it to a good cause? Even better, use it to bribe your friends into doing embarrassing things and film them – unlike fireworks, you can watch that as many times as you want. - Valentine’s Day — This is one of the rare holidays that’s arguably worse if you do have to celebrate it – planning dinner reservations well in advance, setting a spending limit with your SO and worrying if they’ll go over, or, worst of all, proposing to them in a dramatic gesture…and being rejected. Being alone isn’t necessarily great, but there is an upshot: discount candy on February 15th baby!
- Earth Day — You know how you always kind of resent Black History Month or Breast Cancer Awareness month for being kind of patronizing, as though we’d all somehow forgotten that breast cancer was a thing and that black people exist? Earth Day is just a green ribbon away from being one of THOSE. No problem with the message, just the way it’s carried out.
- Groundhog Day — Nearly last place for you, Punxsutawney Phil – your accuracy rate over the years is a paltry 39%. Have some fucking self-respect bro, this shit isn’t a game!
- Columbus Day — Not only is it named for one of the most overrated, exploitative assholes in history, most people don’t even get the day off from work. Fuck you, Columbus.
That’s it for my list – I would do more, but 10 seemed like a nice round number and we’d start getting into some pretty obscure holidays. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some candy and a glass of scotch with my name on them. Love is in the air!
-jsg
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