Holiday Overkill

Ahh, the holidays are just around the corner. And no, I'm not talking about Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve. I am, of course, referring to days like International Aura Awareness Day and National Name Your PC Day.

According to Chase's Calendar of Events (which many consider to be the utmost authority on holidays, celebrations, and anniversaries), these are holidays that many actually celebrate and look forward to. Because, God forbid, I am not aware of my Aura.

At what point in society did we decide to make a whole day dedicated to the use of no good reason? I understand that these particular types of holidays are made to reflect the interests of people and society, and can sometimes be fun (National Play-doh Day? I'm sure mothers love that one) but really, making a holiday for the occasion might be overkill.

It isn't as if we don't have enough legitimate holidays already. Every day could be cause for celebration, anguish, uproar, or excitement if we wanted it to. If the point of a holiday is to raise awareness of a particular problem, like World Orphans Day on Nov. 10, 2008, is caring for that one day really going to help?

The people who make these holidays have to realize that there is a very slim chance people will actually 1) know their holiday exists, or 2) care enough.

The only reason holidays generally are successful is because they manage to feed the economy (eg, Mother's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving) or because they run themselves ragged tagging a certain color (the color pink comes to mind) in support of a problem.

People should not have the mentality that the worldwide epidemic of orphans is only worth a day. It is a problem that exists everyday. They should not need to associate problems with colors in order to reinforce how important something is. What is this, kindergarten? Red is for heart awareness, pink is for breast cancer, blue is ovarian cancer. No, red is red, pink is pink, blue is blue. Things are what they are.

Raising awareness is important. Having a name for your computer just for the hell of it is kind of funny. But we as Americans have a problem with overkill and excess on the wrong things.

How about we not think of cute, funny holidays and just have fun? How about we spearhead legitimate discussions and educate people so that they realize that things like women's history is important everyday and not just in the month of March.

Days and months and colors accomplish nothing. That's why I am declaring National Stop the Holiday Overkill today, Nov. 17.

Hopefully, it's a big hit.