estimated reading time: 4-5 minutes

Christmas. Valentine’s Day. Halloween. Thanksgiving + Black Friday. These are the (US-based) holidays we’ve come to expect and somewhat look forward to every year. But all major holidays, no matter where you’re from have been commercialized and bastardized to hell and back. There’s nothing quite like the whiplash of seeing autumn-related soap scents hit shelves in July, or Christmas-adjacent candles in October.

Now I love a good holiday, and holiday-appropriate decor and food. Sometimes when I’m really bored, I sit down and plan themed dinner parties based on movies, historical events, or I have conversations with my friends on this very topic. Behold: a screenshot of some texts I sent in March to a friend about this very topic:

This was the conversation that made me put a calendar reminder in my phone for August 8th (even though the resignation occurred on the 9th). This was also the conversation that inspired me to try making ‘Watergate Salad’ months later, and unsurprisingly, it was horrible. I made it faithfully, except because I’m a Cool Whip hater, I subbed CW out for homemade whipped cream to give it a fighting chance for me. I ended up throwing half the batch out after a few days because it was so nauseatingly sweet.

This exchange however, led me to think about the over-commercialization of holidays and how we have lost the “magic” in certain social rituals. Holidays, after all, boil down to being “some excuse for humans to get together and do ritualistic things and to remind us that we’re still alive.” So if all the major holidays feel lackluster, I think the natural thing to do is to invent holidays of our own. If I were to invent, let’s say, a holiday celebrating the resignation of former President Nixon, and the Watergate Scandal, I think a dinner where everyone cosplays as different aspects of the Nixon administration, and sits down to eat Watergate Salad, and whatever President Nixon’s favorite foods are would be a stupid but fun idea. We’re not celebrating that Watergate happened, or how Nixon was a great or terrible president. We’re just acknowledging one of the biggest goof-ups in American History. If we had a holiday to acknowledge every goof up that occurred in the last…month? We wouldn’t be able to breathe. The Internet, and having access to instant information is just that suffocating sometimes. But I see no reason not to have a merry jest, or an excuse to get together and have fun. I realize that this makes it seem like I have a fixation on the Watergate Scandal, but I don’t. I just think Nixon quitting is objectively funny, 50 years after the fact.

As I jest, I am aware that we live in unprecedentedly dark times for the history of the world. I am quite confident that we as humans will look back on this period and consider it a “Dark Ages” of sorts - maybe it’ll be called the Digital Dark Ages because we are living through the early stages of the World Wide Web. Our parents can remember life without the Internet, but anyone under the age of 35 probably can’t. But I hope our predecessors start celebrating the birthday of the Internet, or the birthday of important websites like Wikipedia or Archive.org. Many conventions like Comic-Con, Anime Expo, or any pop culture related meetings often attract big crowds and make events based on anniversaries. For example: this year makes the 25th anniversary of One Piece and SpongeBob SquarePants - just two legends, casually sharing the same birth year. Why go to the conventions to celebrate? Just have a little fun party at home! Can you imagine the whimsy of going to Party City and buying SpongeBob-themed party supplies, just to have an adult party with all of your adult friends? Get your friends to dress up as their favorite SpongeBob meme? Imagine the possibilities!

Anyway, my point is: if you have a solid group of homies, you don’t need to have a “good excuse” to hang out. Sometimes you can have a bad excuse to hang out. And the bad excuse can be celebrating the downfall of a US president. Or maybe that’s a good excuse, depending on where you skew on these views. If you come up with a mundane holiday and need a party planner, let me know. I like planning menus and costume themes, I’m not so much an interior decorator.

what i’m watching: the MCU (Minions Cinematic Universe), One Piece, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Dungeon Meshi, and Space Battleship Yamato 2202

what i’m playing: Baldur’s Gate 3 (still in act 3, no spoilers please I’m just slow)