Holidays On The Earth and Off
Ken Drummond Nov 1,
2009
I came here to this planet and where is my manual? No
tour guide! Nothing! You expect me to figure it out on my own? Duh!
I haven’t got a clue. Problem is--everyone tells you something
different. Do this, do that. Believe in God, be an atheist. Be a
Republican, be a Democrat. Eat this, drink that.
It’s enough to drive a person looney. Not that I’m not looney already.
I’m not not looney, I’m genuinely looney.
In Canada they have a one-dollar coin called a loonie. Truly they do!
And I’m from Canada, eh? So go figure. Duh!
So today’s, like, All Saints Day. That’s the day after Halloween, ye
know. Well akshully, I guess you could say that Halloween is the day
before All Saints Day.
Ye see it used to be called All Hallows Day. So, All Hallows Eve--get
it? Nah, I don’t either.
But it makes for a good day after Halloween. It’s for all the
saints--the ones you know about and also the one’s you don’t.
So, like, your grandmother could be a saint and you don’t even know it.
Or like your cat maybe even. So All Saints Day is for honoring them,
and I guess also for asking them for stuff.
Like you could ask Saint Christopher to protect you on a journey. You
could ask Saint Joseph of Cupertino to keep you safe while you are
flying. He was quite a flyer himself, used to float up to the ceiling
with the dishes apparently.
And like your grandmother, you could try asking her for, say--ten
bucks. Your cat, well, it’s not much use asking a cat for anything.
They just do whatever they want.
Anyway, the day after All Saints Day--it’s called All Souls Day.
Believe it or not! It’s a day where you pray for, like, everyone I
guess.
You could try asking them for stuff too. Like, try to borrow your
brother’s skateboard or something.
So, speaking of holidays and the day after holidays…
In Canada the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day. Don’t ask me
why. Something about boxing up the gifts you don’t want maybe. Started
with the post office I think.
Anyway, I figured that if the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, then
the day after New Year’s should have a name too. So I called it
Wrestling Day. That’s the day when you start to wrestle with your New
Year’s resolutions. If you made any!
Then I find out that Wrestling Day is already a holiday in some other
place. Amazing. But truly, I thought of it first, or at least before I
heard of this other wrestling holiday anyway.
So, you never know. Holidays are always changing. But as long as we
have plenty of them, that’s the main thing.
Now on Mars apparently they don’t have any holidays. That’s right.
Every day is work, work, work.
Of course the work is easier there. Counting craters, that sort of
thing. I’m not sure what they eat on Mars. But I think it’s crunchy.
Crunchy blueberries maybe.
Now on the moon, when they have holidays, all they do is gaze at the
earth. Wish they could be here I guess. Moon people who live and work
on the far side of the moon always travel to the near side on their
holidays so that they can look at the earth.
Sometimes they stop along the way to look at the famous footprints made
by the visiting earth people. But they only look at them from their
hover mobiles because they don’t want to disturb them.
When there is a full earth shining, it is very bright on the moon. Not
as bright as daytime but much brighter than a full moon is here on
earth.
From the moon’s near side they can always see the earth, any time of
the night or day. The only thing is that the earth is always changing
shape, going gradually from an almost non-existing thin crescent to a
“full earth”, then back again.
And from the far side of the moon, of course, they never see the earth.
But when it is nighttime they always have a good view of the stars. Of
course they have to dress up in their heavy coats and long underwear,
for it is very cold at night on the moon.
So there are different holidays all around the world, and even off the
world.
So even if we don’t know what we’re doing here--we have no instruction
manual and nobody who really knows what is going on--it can be a pretty
good time when holidays roll around.
Just remember not to forget your resolutions--at least until the day
after Wrestling Day.