It’s always the first three quarters of the year entirely where I just do not care for its holidays. They’re all boring and forgettable to me. Which is why I love the last quarter of the year where Halloween, X-Mas and X-Mas Part II reside.
New Year’s Day - Wooo…just watching a ball drop and people just drinking or going to NY just to kiss on camera.
Valentine’s Day - Awesome…just to be reminded how single some of us are so all of the mush of couples being shoved in our faces.
St. Patrick’s Day - Just another excuse to go out drinking to most, not as if drinkers turn every other day into drinking.
Easter - Nobody can agree as to the true meaning of this holiday. It’s just seen as yet another excuse to consume candy and go on dinners, kinda what Halloween and Thanksgiving both became more about. Non-religious people think it’s bunny related, religious people believe it belongs to Jesus and whatever. Conflicted holiday, can’t care.
4th of July - America’s Birthday, yeah I’ve not have had a single solitary reason to celebrate America’s birthday at all given the reputation it has gathered as of late and for a while. This is the period of the month where people annoy everyone with their big shopping sprees on fireworks.
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For many years I have attended, under protest, family functions on holidays. I attend because they’re family and I love to see them but I make no secret of my feelings regarding the holidays.
4th of July - exploding trash celebrating the independence of a failing state, should be the day we vote if we’re really celebrating independence and the creation of our representative democracy.
Thanksgiving - forgotten about the Arawaks, we mowed down a race so an engine could ride a pair of tracks, who cares about facts when there’s food on the table, sayin’ thanks 'cause the giving was the reason for the fable.
Christmas - I’m not not christian and do not like the theft and commercialization of Yule.
Easter - fuckin’ zombies, man
Veteran’s day - let’s make this one more inclusive and just call it Bad Career Choice Day.
Dutchie here. Apart from the purely religious (easer, whitsuntide, etc) and commercial ones (e.g. Valentine’s day), I really loathe King’s Day. It is the day that our propogandists expect us to ‘celebrate’ our monarchy. They ‘mingle’ among the people (that is, they are paraded around waving at dumb fucks in orange clothes) and ‘spontenously’ join in old-timey games with said dumb fucks. It’s a celebration of nationalism and nostalgia -in-an-icky-way.
Another one is Liberation Day. I am anti-fascist and my grandparents witnessed the horrors of WW2 first hand, so I appreaciate the idea of it. However, it is not an official bank holiday as the employers’ lobby decided it was not and with a former ultra right gorvernment, it has lost all meaning to me.
It never really had any meaning to me but hey, I’ll take any excuse for a day off.
Thanksgiving in my family always started around 10 PM the preceding night, all hands on deck, no sleeping allowed, because there was too much cooking and cleaning to be done. Grease, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, or Mamma Mia! playing on a loop the whole time, as that was the only mom-approved background noise, at full blast, so the music can be clearly heard over the roar of vacuum cleaners, carpet shampooers, sizzling skillets, and hurled profanities. An insane amount of effort for what would amount to a massive amount of middling food waste at the best of times.
All in the name of trying to impress some very toxic people we never saw at any other time of year, if they bothered to show up in the first place. The kind of toxic people who always found something to complain about, regardless of how ragged my mother ran herself, or her kids. The kind of toxic people who would be very unhappy to find out I’m a gay democrat who doesn’t like turkey.
So, for the sake of my blood pressure, I make sure I ‘happen’ to have to work every year.
I’m a gay democrat who doesn’t like turkey.
Bro, how do you America like that?
/s
That’s a bloody nightmare
I don’t celebrate any of them, haven’t really in a long while other than having dinner with a friend’s parents sometimes. I find the big ones rather depressing for a variety of reasons. Also could never find anyone to celebrate any of them with (going out to crowded places isn’t appealing to me anyway, so most parties and get togethers are out), other than xmas which I specifically dislike, so I gave up trying. I text people well-wishes if they text me, but I typically don’t even know when they are so…
Just another day like every other day.
I’m so old that I’m sick and tired of all of them.
AND you are a taco thief! :)
El ladrón de tacos!
Sorry, I like expanding my vocabulary and doing silly things like this helps me remember el ladrón es the thief.
El lardon de tacos if they eat them all.
Gracias, porque I like picking up a little bit more, although I’m not sure I’ll have many occasions in which to use this one, but I’ll try. :)
I’m not sure I’ll have many occasions in which to use this one, but I’ll try. :)
My favorite french nonsense is "je suis une fermier des paumplemousses et j’aime faire de l’alpinisme“ because it was all on the same vocabulary page and that sentence was how I could remember it.
Not much opportunity to work “I am a grapefruit farmer and I like mountaneering” into casual conversation. Not very handy when traveling, either. Just generally not useful. But fun!
Hah, that is a delightful one!
There’s a joke I’d tried off and on to make happen over the past 25 years. My stepmother (mom died after I was an adult, dad remarried) is a delightful half-Swedish half-Norwegian - who married a Hispanic the first time around, so to hear her speak Spanish with a Swedish accent is quite hilarious. But thanks to her, I somehow learned that “absolut hinte” (I think I misspelled that) means “absolutely not”. So I was trying to work on a pun about absolute hentai and never could get a good setup. The only joke I could ever get working was something about someone offering someone else a glass of vodka, and the other person saying “absolut hinte”, being a teetotaller - to pun on the vodka brand Absolut. lol. Ah, well.
But if you’re not already a fan of Suzy (preivously Eddie) Izzard, oh boy do I have a video for you. Including one of my favorite jokes in a foreign language, which I believe is something like he goes into a hotel and asks, “Do you have any rooms?” and the clerk says “Of course we do. We’re a hotel.” lol. It’s something like that, anyway. I do not speak French, although that reminds me of my favorite French joke outside the hotel one, which is:
Q: How do you pick up old French ladies?
A: “Voul et vous crochet avec moi?”hehe
Anyway, the standup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sQkEfAdfY
Easier way to explain it for me, breaking down all public holidays (in Canada) and what I do for each, as a non-religious Canadian:
- New Year - stay up till midnight, have a drink, usually play board games while we wait for 12:00. We don’t always make it to midnight though, so sometimes we say 10:30 is our midnight and celebrate then instead. Depends on the year.
- Good Friday - mostly just an excuse for a fish dinner. I’m not religious but I like to observe traditions where I can. I was never raised catholic but I know fish on Good Friday is important to them and I love anything seafood so I take it as a good excuse to have a nice fish meal. I don’t really do much else.
- Easter - usually a ham dinner. Again, an excuse for a nice meal. Don’t do much else.
- Victoria Day - I haven’t done anything in the past, but I’d be open to ideas if anyone else has any. My wife and I just restarted a rewatch of Doctor Who for the millionth time and just watched the episode where they meet Queen Victoria last night, maybe we could watch that episode every Victoria Day or something.
- Canada Day - wear red, hang up a Canada flag, listen to Canadian artists, eat stereotypical Canadian food, drink Canadian drinks. I think last time for supper we did Hawaiian pizza, all dressed chips, and Caesars (the drink, not the salad).
- Civic holiday - not much, just enjoy the day off.
- Labour Day - same deal, not much, just enjoy the day.
- National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - haven’t done anything before but I’d like to start a tradition. If anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them.
- Thanksgiving - an excuse for turkey dinner. Not much else.
- Remembrance Day - wear a poppy, moment of silence at 11am, otherwise not a whole lot.
- Christmas Day - I’m a big fan of Christmas, it’s my favourite time of year, not for the religious or consumerist aspects but my parents growing up always made it an incredible time of year and now that I’ve got a little one, my wife are using that as an excuse to go all out. We’re doing homemade decorations and stuff as much as we can and it’s been a ton of fun. My wife is quite crafty and has made almost everything on our Christmas tree. Most of our decorations around the house that she can’t make were bought at a thrift store. I hate how consumerist Christmas has become but you can absolutely go all out with the Christmas spirit without spending tons of money. I also genuinely love Christmas music despite working in retail and being subjected to it for two months straight every year, so lots of Christmas music gets played from November 12 (day after Remembrance Day) until January 7 (what we call Old Christmas, I’m not sure the reason now but it works as a good cutoff for the season). We also have a traditional Christmas dinner. My dad and I also play racing games together throughout the month of December. Not strictly Christmas but it always feels Christmas-y to play Forza now.
- Boxing Day - growing up we would go shopping for big ticket items but I’m not really into that these days. Now it’s the day to spend with anyone we didn’t get the chance to on Christmas Day/Eve, as well as enjoying any presents we did get for each other and just spending time together watching Christmas movies, drinking hot chocolate with Baileys, etc. Sort of the wind down after the hectic fun of the big day the day before.
For other holidays:
- Saint Patrick’s Day - not much, but usually a single drink of something Irish. Either Guinness or an Irish whiskey.
- Halloween - I’m not usually a big fan but since having a little one it’s more fun now. I don’t care for dressing up and I don’t have a sweet tooth, and I don’t care for horror movies, but dressing the little one up is adorable.
- Valentine’s Day - give my wife some flowers and give her a spa night. I don’t care much for the day but she loves it so I make it important for her.
- Mother’s Day - I try to give my wife a good day, but nothing specific. Just try to spoil her. She’s not materialistic so I don’t usually buy her anything but she’s big into dates and experiences so I try to take her somewhere. Maybe a stroll or a nice dinner or something. I also go out with my mother usually the week before to a cafe when it’s not as busy.
- Father’s Day - my dad always wants to go out for breakfast to the same spot every year, so we go do that. Otherwise not much.
I have never been in any sort of serious romantic relationship, so Valentine’s Day means precisely fuck all to me. I’m also too old to really do Halloween anymore.
My wife and I tend to celebrate the week after Valentines.
Ironically Valentines Day is the worst time to go out anywhere or get her chocolates.
Yes! Valentine’s Day is an equal opportunity bad time for all. Makes single people feel bad and exploits coupled (or poly) people with jacked up prices for flowers and subpar restaurant food that you have to book a month in advance.
I live in Japan, so basically none of those. I guess I get stuff on v-day (we have a separate holiday where men give stuff a month later called white day). No ball drop or anything here for new-year; people spend the year-end and new year with family most of the time, which is nice.
Christmas is a religious holiday that developed secular appeal. Easter is only a religious holiday. It is in fact the most important important religious holiday. My grandmother only made stuffed cabbages on special occasions: weddings, Christmas, and Easter. That’s it. It’s a big holiday that only matters to people who literally believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead that day. I don’t celebrate Easter anymore.
Both Christmas and Easter were pagan holidays that were largely hijacked by Christians for their own purposes.
Nothing is original, and nonetheless we use words to identify them.
What? No Easter bunny, Easter chocolate and painting eggs?
No, the holidays I celebrate have some kind of emotional meaning to me. Thanksgiving makes me feel grateful and satisfied, Christmas makes me feel cheerful and connected to others, when I celebrated July 4th it was pride. Without the religious meaning, Easter makes me feel nothing. If anything, it’s awkward and pointless.
Agreed. I was trying to point out to the op who said, “Easter is only a religious holiday” that it too has been twisted in order for businesses to make money.
Atheist here. It’s my excuse to make a dozen hard boiled eggs and hide them for my 8 y/o. He gets an old basket with some jelly beans and we all share some decent chocolate from a nearby candy shop.
It’s just an excuse to have a slightly different Sunday morning once a year.
Ramadan
Not Muslim, and it just doesn’t sound like a fun time. Can’t think of any particular reason I’d want to celebrate it.
The food after fasting ends, of course.
Damn, people have a lot to say about this.
4th of July mainly.
Outside of Christmas and Thanksgiving (in the us) my opinion is that most of the holidays are meaningless.
Christmas and midsummer are the only ones I “celebrate” in any meaningful sense. Or at least used to. No point of celebrating much of anything when you’re alone.
My sister in law threw a great Midsommer (yes like the movie) party this year. We were kinda surprised how fun the maypole was.
I don’t celebrate New Year other than some message in friend group.
I don’t really want to celebrate lunar new year as well but am forcing myself to show face to my relatives, it’s not their fault i’m just tired.
I don’t celebrate valentines because i’m single
I don’t celebrate my country’s independence day because i just don’t really care about the country that mostly only care about their ethnic group. I can rest though.
I don’t celebrate Christmas because i’m not christian.
The only holiday i celebrate is may 1st labour day. I celebration HARD by wake up late and doing absolutely nothing. Best holiday ever.
I celebrate pretty much all of the US ones in my own way, but probably Valentine’s Day and July 4th are the two I don’t do much for. My better half and I just don’t feel the need for Valentine’s day. The 4th I use to do more but it’s always so dry these days I’m not comfortable doing much of anything.
