A Grinch for All Seasons

As a kid, the Fourth of July is all about picnics and fireworks. Halloween is about costumes and candy and staying up late. Christmas about presents. Thanksgiving about food and relatives you haven't seen in a long time...

Last night my lovely wife mentioned that I was a Grinch for all holidays. I know the show of the holidays are important to her and I remember the fun of childhood, but as I get older, things have other meanings and I have other ways of showing my feelings.

New Years day- just a date.

Valentines- Every day is and should be Valentines. This is one that I try to make special for K because she likes the show- but she makes every day special.

St. Patrick's Day- I was raised as a rabid Irish nationalist, without necessarily having any information. Just a family tradition. Since I don't enjoy crowds, it's now just a day to have a glass of Jamesons on the deck.

Somewhere in here, maybe on the equinox, maybe not, there will be one day that feels like spring, a day of no rain and fresh wind and new green- and that day is holy beyond anything that can be put on a calendar.

Easter- I'm a little old and done with reproduction to get into a pagan fertility festival, but I still feel a responsibility to have rockin' good sex on Easter.

Mother's Day- Should be every day, but again it is about the show for the mothers who want it.

Memorial Day- A quiet one for me, where I spend some time remembering our dead, the ones who died for all of us. Read some of the accounts, and try to appreciate a price paid that I can never fully understand.

Father's Day- Being a father is a blast. Having Fathers day is kind of like throwing a party to celebrate throwing a party. It makes no sense to me.

Independence Day- This is the day for the annual reading of the Constitution and the amendments. We forget what a great and daring experiment the Constitution was and what the people who signed it risked and often lost. We are the beneficiaries of great wisdom, great sacrifice and it was truly the dawn of a new world... even our whining is based on principles that were inconceivable before 1776.

ABBB- The August Babies Birthday Bash. A pure celebration of friendship, with old and new stories; songs; belly dancing; a dancing lobster; fine scotch and a pile of meat.

Some day around the equinox in September there will be another sacred day- clear and cold and windy. On that day, if I can, I will walk until I see something magic, and there is always a danger that I won't return, because Autumn is my wandering time.

Halloween is the time to honor my dead. It is a time for memories and light mourning, usually alone and outside.

Thanksgiving- The original Plymouth colony suffered fifty percent mortality in their first winter. It is the time to give thanks for being among the living, for remembering and treasuring the unique events of the past year that will affect your future.

Pearl Harbor Day- An inside joke, but one of my most important holidays, "A day that will live in infamy..."

Yule- On the darkest night you take stock of your stores and, if all is well, celebrate that you and yours will live through the rest of the winter. It is time for remembering the last year and planning the next; for making sure that you are right with the gods/spirits or ethics that you wish in your life. There are many ways of taking stock.