Holiday Ramblings

I often think of easy access to the internet as both the best and the worst thing that has happened to humanity. Sure, it's really nice to have the answers at our fingertips, but because we can access information so easily, no one ever bothers to commit things to memory. I'm fairly convinced that 90% of all questions these days are answered with the ever-popular, "I don't know, just Google it." I really do worry that someday game shows which used to reward people for being smart like "Jeopardy" will be decided by who can can find answers on the internet faster than their competition. (You'll note that we already tried this with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and its 'phone a friend' feature. That lifeline may as well have been called, "Let's just cut out the middle man - you have 30 seconds to Google it yourself.") Now, admittedly, for the most part this lack of information retention isn't that big a deal. I mean, no one needs to store random facts like whether or not Tony Randall is still with us inside their brains at all times (for the record, he's not). The problem is it's starting to seep into everyday life and we're forgetting stuff that we should know, like what constitutes a holiday.

This came up last night because I was having dinner with the family and my sisters and I were trying to figure out what would be open today. This used to be a very simple. Question: What was closed on a holiday? Answer: Everything. But, between companies offering floating holidays which people can use at any time, retail stores seeing the chance to have a weekend-type crowd in their stores on a weekday and businesses simply deciding that, screw it, we're going to be open because you people just had a week off between Christmas and New Year's, some stuff is open and other stuff isn't. Suddenly it is a hard question to answer. You can't even makes plans with people for the holiday because you can never tell if they will have to work or if they will be available to do something. I only wish we would be more consistent with it. The best guesses are that banks, schools, the post office and trash pickup isn't going to happen. You are on your own for the rest. Basically, the best thing you can do now is head to the Internet and check it out company by company, which I have to tell you is a real waste of time. (Though, admittedly, it does work out better than driving all the way to a place and finding out it's closed.)

It's the floating holidays that I really don't get. Just who decided this was a thing? What HR person was sitting in their office one afternoon and said, "You know what? I really think the government dropped the ball by having President's Day in February. I feel like things are much more Presidential in the summer, so that's when I want this company to celebrate it." Isn't the whole purpose of a holiday to celebrate something specific at a meaningful time to that event? I have always felt as though that was part of the deal - we'll give you a day off, but you have to take at least 30 seconds at some point during that day to think about why it is you got to sleep nice and late this morning. I really doubt you will remember the point of a holiday when your are using your floating holidays from the fall to take extra time in the summer. But, it does seem to lend some weight to my other theory, which is that floating holidays were invented by someone who was really bad at budgeting their vacation time and sick days for the year and always ended up using them all up by March.

Of course, some people will counter with the argument that we have entirely too many holidays to begin with. This is, of course, crazy talk. Not only should people never argue against more holidays, but when you stop and think about all the random groups that make up this country of ours, I'm really surprised there aren't more of them. If you are actually one of those people who are against holidays just be thankful the really obscure groups don't have the time or influence to make any real political pushes, otherwise we'd be celebrating any number of random days away from work. Think about it: if some eccentric billionaire with money to burn decided that we should really go back to holidays on the pagan calendar, I'm willing to bet it wouldn't be too long before some Congressman who is up for re-election and needs to do some campaigning would be on the floor of the house, offering up a resolution to create a holiday for Zeus. But whether we ever get to that point or not, how about we all work on using holidays when they are supposed to be celebrated? It might go a long way in actually remembering what the holiday was intended to be celebrating in the first place.