The Hazardous Holidays

December 31 through January 1: New Years:
What a wonderful two-day binge. We spend New Years Eve and New Years getting drunk and intoxicated, and then we go around driving in our cars and kill each other. OR, due to stupidity in celebrating, people ending up killing themselves or each other. For example, in Sacramento during the 1996 New Year celebration, out here in my (red)neck of the area, peoplem were shooting guns into the air. Well folks, what goes up must come down. Several people were injured when these bullets succumbed to gravity. A couple were killed. Fortunately, this happened in deep bubba-territory, so I guess Nature was helping to weed out the shallow end of the gene pool.

January 15, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, (observered):
A man with a dream, a wonderful dream, where all men and women, regardless of race, color or beliefs would be considered equal. Unfortunately, some crazed wack-o thought that it would be a good idea to kill this man. I would prefer that we not celebrate this holiday, but I would think it would be better if this assassination never happened in the first place.

February 14, St. Valentine's Day:
What a wonderful way to celebrate love than to give flowers, cards and candy to honor the death of some so called saint. Of course, there is the famous St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

February, Abraham Lincoln's Birthday: The 16th president of the United States. A man of many accomplishments, although recent discoveries tend to discredit this. We celebrate his birthday because he was assassinated. Shot in the head? Hey, let's make his birthday a holiday!

February, George Washington's Birthday:
The first president of our country. I'm sure this holiday is to celebrate that he's the first president, but he's dead. I'm sure this didn't become a holiday until long after he died.

Just to shake things up, we typically make the celebration of Washington and Lincoln's birthday a 4 day holiday. The holiday starts on a Friday, goes through the weekend and ends on Monday, providing lots of opportunities for alcohol-inspired road accidents and a great Tuesday hang-over.

St. Patrick's Day, March 15:
Let's all drink beer and walk in the streets, get hit by cars, fall in rivers and drown. I guess this is the Irish way of thinning the population.

Easter Sunday(Late March, Early April):
Not much of a holiday for atheists, but Christians seem to make a big deal out of this. They are supposedly celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, but this wouldn't be necessary if Jesus(if he was real) wasn't KILLED in the first place. Basically, some guy is nailed to a tree and we have a holidy. Good deal. Too bad it's a Sunday, otherwise I could get a paid holiday.
And what's the deal with coloring eggs? Isn't that a non-sequiter? While I am on that subject, where the heck this this idea of hiding the eggs come from?

May, Memorial Day:
This is part of a 2-part holiday that wraps up later in the year. Memorial day is dedicated to all the men and women of the United States Armed forces who died in the line of duty of trying to make good on politicians' pissing matches. Still, it is nice to honor the people who died serving the country that sent them to their death. Aren't we nice?

May, Mother's Day:
Finally, a holiday that doesn't involve murder or death. We celebrate mothers, for all the hard, under-appreciated and thankless work they do every single day. Largely considered a "Hallmark Holiday" since tradition calls for the purchase of "Mother's Day" cards.

June, Father's Day:
Another holiday that doesn't directly involve murder or death. Also largely considered a "Hallmark Holiday" since tradition calls for the purchase of "Father's Day" cards. Typcally the worse things that happen are maybe a barbeque accident. However, with this being one of the first "Summer" holidays, we can expect some drinking and driving.

July 4, Independence Day in United States:
We celebrate the day The United States told England to basicaly "bugger off" and started what is in effect the first modern war. In America, this is more of a purist holiday. We celebrate this holiday by blowing stuff up. Each year around this time, you hear of kids putting M80's up cats' asses, blowing up frogs, mailboxes, large fruit, many other small animals, and even the odd hand or two as someone is late to throw the item with a lit fuse. This holiday also seems to involve vast quantities of alcoholic beverages and drunk driving, in addition to the discharge of firearms. So, basically we spend a 3-day weekend blowing up each other, having car accidents with each other, and shooting at each other. I think this is what we call "family entertainment".

August:
In August we're spared from holidays. For the most part, we save up all our homicidal tendencies in the heat of the summer and watch the news for reports of people going mad from the heat and going on shooting rampages. I guess without an organized method of expending this build-up tension, it's wise to stay indoors with the doors locked and the air conditioning turn on. Other highlights also include lots of drownings in the nations waterways and other acts of mans' stupidity, which are more frequent that we'd like to admit.

September, Labor Day:
We start to get back into the holidays again. September features Labor day, which is a holiday dedicated to the EMPLOYED people. So, we basically celebrate working by not working. Isn't that ironic? Also, this holiday typically represents the end of summer and the start of school again. This holiday is usually on a Monday and wraps up a 3 day weekend that typically involves a lot of picnicing, alcohol, barbecue and intoxicated driving and LOTS of highway fatalities. This is sort of nature's way of combatting the crowding in schools issue by wiping out entire families on the nation's freeways and highways. The upside of Labor Day is those employed people who get snuffed leave job openings for others to fill. Sort of a win-win holiday. Of course, this holiday doesn't mean quite as much to the people who are out of work except they get to spend 3 days with their working friends.

October 10, Columbus Day:
This holiday speaks MOUNTAINS about America as a whole. First, we have a guy who didn't know where he was going completely MISS what is was history says he discovered. Then, when he got back, he didn't know where he had been. The best part was he did it ALL on borrowed money. This holiday is basically a celebration of fraud and incompetence AND the introduction of European Disease to the "New World". Countless deaths were the direct result of the "white man" with the indigenous people of the West Indies. Sort of a triibute to the amount of fraud in America.

Halloween, October 31
All Hallows Eve. Not sure what this really means, but this is really more of a pagan holiday. Note that pagan doesn't mean "devil worshipping" because it ISN'T. Besides, the devil is more of a christian concept, so you can't worship the devil if you're pagan. Still, this celebration of the dead has been embraced as a holiday were you dress up funny and beg for candy while it's dark outside. For some, the dressing up and begging part is either practice for the future homeless and could be considered job training, or a delusional experience for door to door salespeople. Damned if you don't hear a few news reports of some little sugar-rushed kids get run over by cars. Yeah, what a fun holiday. To top it off, millions of pumkins are the direct objects of all sorts of attrocities. The vast majority of these pumpkins are merely dis-emboweled, with their snot-like innards scooped out and discarded. To add further insult to injury, their rinds are violated with grade-school artwork carved into it and put on display as a final humiliation. We'll give honorable mention to those who cook the pumkin seeds, as those can be quite tasty. Of course, the pumpkin is a vegetable, specifically a member of the squash family. Unfortunately, many of the costumed suger-high beggers think of "squash" as a verb and they destroy the desecrated remains of this innocent plant. Oh, the humanity!!! We're a cruel society.

November 11, Veteran's Day:
This is Part II of Memorial Day. On this holiday we celebrate ALL people who served in the United States Armed Forces, especially those who survived wars. Typically this is a paper holiday as nobody really seems to get the day off. Sure, we celebrate the snuffed, but not the living. Whatever. I can't figure out these things any more than you can. This holiday is a slap in the face to veterans who were injured in wars, ranging from minor wounds to the lost of limbs, and just about everything in between. Lose a leg, ZIP. Get killed and the nation takes a day off to drink in honor of others as dead as you are.

Thanksgiving, late November, United States:
This is the start of the big homicide holiday season. Typically, after this holiday, the christmas rush used to begin. Now this rush starts before halloween. Sickening. Still, the center piece of this holiday involves the roasted corpsed of a murdered turkey. Sure, the turkey isn't exactly an attractive beast, nor is it an intelligent beast. By no means it is a noble beast. In my opinion, it's not even a tasty beast. Yet, despite all this, we chop off a turkey's head, shove bread crumbs up its ass and shove it into an oven for the vast majority of the day, during which time people watch football on TV and drink beer. Once the bird is done, everyone stuffs their face and then passes out in a post-gluttony coma.