Lost Holidays

Yesterday was King Canute's Day, marking the end of the Scandinavian Christmas Season. It's the day you pull down the ornaments and burn the Christmas tree in the backyard.

I'm packing our tree into a large cardboard box, and the ornaments, lights and other decorations are being pushed into Rubbermaid storage bins, or old liquor boxes. The only burning that happend yesterday was dinner, lost in a bizarre mircowave accident. I still smell plastic.

I wonder what our neighbors thought of our Christmas lights still burning proudly into mid-January. It made me wonder how many other holidays exist or have existed that no one knows about. Holidays packed away in old leather satchels, rolled in papyrus scrolls, burned in the backyard marking the end of another holiday [or should that be holyday as you might guess], lost between the cushions of couches, holidays sent to the laundromat for washing, disappearing in the dryer.

I lay in bed this morning dreaming of the old and the new:

The Holy Week of Skull Cleansing
Hangnail Day
Off-White Day of the Unvirgin Birth
Anti-Christmas
Spoon Day
Ceasar Augustus' Birthday [August 1st of course]
Llama Washing Day
Mid-Season Holidays [all four]
Breath Holding Day [sometimes called Bluesday]
Titheday
Anniversary of Margaret Mayfield Garret's Drawing and Quartering on the Boston Commons
Wordsday

We already have Cheese Weasel Day and Morgan's Day. I wonder if everyday could be a holiday...