OPINION: Reasons to celebrate

For Christmas, a friend got me one of those daily, tear-away calendars. They’re great if you work at a desk, and I’ve loved having them in the past. Previous iterations I’ve owned include cats in silly places and trivia. This year’s edition - holidays.

I think we all hear about specific but strange holidays from time to time - Sept. 6 is Read a Book Day and March 14 is Pi Day. However, various lobbyists or even just fans have found ways to celebrate anything they love or find important, leading to there be multiple holidays every day.

Some have more meaning than others. For example, Saturday, Feb. 14 was National Organ Donor Day alongside Valentine’s Day. Founded in 1998 as simply National Donor Day, the goal was to bring attention to the importance of all types of donations, including organs, blood, tissue and marrow. Putting this holiday with Valentine’s Day symbolizes the importance of life and love. Plus, now there’s two ways to give your heart on Feb. 14!

However, most of the holidays are super random. Feb. 9 was Pizza Day, while Jan. 14 was Dress Up Your Pet Day. My coworkers ask me every day what the holiday is today. For some reason, it seems a majority of the ones on this calendar are food related. For this reason, they’ve decided the calendar is a scam by Big Grocery to make us buy more food. Well, I guess you never know!

However, this has made me curious about the process of creating a holiday. I started doing some research and the answers were pretty interesting. First you have to figure out the category of holiday. There are federal holidays, religious holidays, international holidays and national holidays.

Someone on Reddit joked that the hardest one to create would be a religious holiday because you’d need to create your own religion first. I would say the next hardest to create would be a federal holiday.

Right now, there are 12 permanent federal holidays: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, Inauguration Day (every four years following a presidential election), George Washington’s Birthday (or President’s Day), Memorial Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

In order for a federal holiday to be created, Congress has to vote in favor of it and then it must be signed by the president. Between the already low number of federal holidays and the likelihood of Congress agreeing on something, I think the chances of getting a new federal holiday is pretty unlikely.

However, the president can sign an executive order to designate a one-time federal holiday for special circumstances, such as national days of mourning or for important events. This if also often done when Christmas falls on the weekend in order to give federal employees more days off.

Somehow, it seems to me that creating an international holiday is easier than a federal holiday, simply because the United Nations has a calendar full of them already. According to the United Nations’ website, “International days are proposed to the UN General Assembly by Member States. The General Assembly then decides by consensus whether to adopt the resolution establishing the particular day.”

Holidays or observances approved are always associated with various missions of the United Nations, including “the maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of sustainable development, the protection of human rights, and the guarantee of international law and humanitarian action.”

For example, yesterday was World Wildlife Day, tomorrow is International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness and Sunday is International Women’s Day.

However, the holidays that are seen in my calendar are none of these. Instead, these are the so-called national holidays. Generally the least important but easiest to create and most fun. There are a small handful of companies that produce calendars and other general media that allows various companies, non-profits and even regular people to request a new holiday be added to the list. National Day Calendar and National Day Archives are two of these. In reality, when there’s a new national holiday, that’s all it’s for.

However, that doesn’t make the idea any less fun. I just wish there was a little more rhyme or reason to when the holidays are. National Play Tennis Day was in February, and I don’t know who decided that was a good idea. I would have happily celebrated if it was during the warmer months!

If you could create a holiday, what would you make? Chances are it already exists, so go out and celebrate!