I think it’s fair to assume, historically speaking, that every holiday on the calendar is man-made, man created. If you think of the concept this way, at the beginning of time there were no holidays. I would suspect that when we went from families to tribes, the biggest, toughest member of the tribe would call all the shots on what the tribe did and what the tribe thought was important, and how things were going to be marked.
I always thought that when Mug and his counter tribal member Ug were sitting in a cave and lightning hit a tree in front of them, they were convinced that one of them had done something wrong. This would be especially true when a few months later Ug gets hit on the top of the head with a lightning bolt. That’s when the tribe figures somebody done somebody wrong and the eye in the sky was setting things straight.
We’re here on the doorstep of March and here comes a couple of big holidays, St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. As a little guy, both of these holidays held significance. On Easter you got new shoes and a chocolate rabbit and you went to church a couple more times that week. St. Patrick’s Day, that has morphed itself into green Halloween, was probably the first civil rights demonstration in the new world when a bunch of my relatives marched down 5th Avenue in New York, to snub their noses at the Protestant Yankees.
Question, have you ever had anyone say they’re trying to get rid of the holiday blues around Easter and St. Patrick’s? You’ve never heard anybody say that Easter music or St. Patrick’s music depressed them. In fact, if you’re drinking, Irish music begins to sound Chinese around 4:00 in the afternoon. In fact, with Irish music, you can only do two things. I know people say you can dance to it but that’s not true, you can fight or you can drink but you can’t dance or make love. So much for St. Patrick and, for what it’s worth, Ireland never had snakes. I think they all went to Scotland. Which kind of kills another rumor.
Think now of Kwanzaa. If there ever was a holiday that’s made up that’s Kwanzaa. But give it another generation. Kwanzaa will be as accepted as any other holiday. I see myself as kind of a pre-Kwanzaa kid, but to each his own.
And to further give you ideas about how holidays are manufactured, there are now efforts across this country to rename Columbus Day. Here in Colorado, the charge is led by one of the foremost politically correct greats Representative Joe (Little Joe from Kokomo) Salazar who wants to put the kibosh on Columbus Day. The Thornton Democrat is the head of a growing chorus of people calling for Columbus Day to be renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Native American Day, or Dia De La Roza. Are you starting to get the point?
In the distant future, think of all the holidays we could eliminate: Groundhog Day could become Endangered Species Day, Labor Day could be called Welfare Day, and Memorial Day could be Conscientious Objector Day.
So here’s the $64,000 question, what does the Easter bunny have to do with Easter? What do bunnies, colored eggs, and baby chickens wearing gardening hats have to do with Easter? The Christian holiday that honors the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead? The answer is spring. The time of much sexual activity and birth, and new life.
So when you’re scarfing down chocolate bunnies on Easter Sunday ask your friends what the hell do these little chickens have to do with Easter, or better yet, how about Scientology? It’s the one religion that makes all the others look good. If you’ll buy Zenu, the evil space dictator, you’re good to go on any and all holidays.
By the way, have you ever read what the Hindus believe? Wow. That’s a lot to swallow. So I guess I’ll put on my new shoes, watch my grandson sing in church, and enjoy Easter ham, and a chocolate bunny.
— Peter