False Holidays @Solsticepublish

It’s officially spring.  So how did we celebrate that in Nebraska?  With blistering winds and cold temperatures.  It always amazes me that people see the date on the calendar for the start of spring and just expect it to be sunny skies and instant warmth.  To those of you in warm climates this probably doesn’t apply.  In the slightly colder places, however, the weather man makes a big deal all week long about the first day of spring.  Then it rolls around and nothing has changed.  It’s almost like holidays or special occasions.  My birthday comes every year and I feel about the same as the day before.  New Year’s comes every year and after the ball drops in Times Square I just sort of say “OK, that was great,” and go to bed.  The first day of summer, fall and winter come and there is no dramatic shift in the weather or anything else in the world.  I really don’t see the significance.  Do you get a day off from work?  Usually not.  Does the environment make a rapid change?  Almost never.  Why is there such a fascination?  There are just all of these events on the calendar which serve no real purpose except for keeping track of time.  Yesterday it was 60 degrees here and tonight it will be in the teens.  A date on the calendar circled has nothing to do with any of that.  Then there are the holidays that just make no sense to me.  St. Patrick’s Day is the biggest bar day of the year.  People take it off from work (and the day after) so they can go drink as much as they can and find their way home without being arrested.  Never having spoken with St Patrick I can’t tell you for sure what he would say but I can’t believe this would be the way he wanted his holiday spent.  Then there’s Sweetest Day.  It is Hallmark’s copy of Valentine’s Day.  Anyone dating or married over two years has pretty much abandoned this one.  As for Valentine’s Day itself, forget about going to a nice restaurant.  You’ll either not get seated or have terrible service.  Flowers and candy jump up in price.  Yet, if you don’t observe it and play the game you end up as the bad guy.  There’s not much good fighting that battle.  All these dates have been commercialized for profit.  I mean seriously, why do we even celebrate Columbus Day?  There are sales in the stores and banks close.  But Columbus didn’t prove the world was round.  He didn’t find a passage to the Far East.  He didn’t even discover the Americas.  The Vikings alone had him beaten by several hundred years.  Yet every year stores have their big Columbus Day Sales.  It’s all about money and keeping track of time.  When was the last time the groundhog was right on February 2nd?