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.