For as long as I can remember, even when I was a kid, I never understood the concept of holidays. Weird, right? For a while, I thought so too. I thought to myself, “why do you question holidays so much?” Or, “Why do you get so sad when holidays come around?” Now that I’ve really thought about it, it’s not weird at all. Holiday’s serve as a crappy excuse for the things that we should celebrate, or want to do every day- whether for ourselves or the people around us. I explain what I find problematic using three holidays I've had personal experience with...

Christmas

Regarding the religious aspect that we take to observe historic moments within our beliefs, this is one thing that does not confuse me. What does confuse me is the commercialization that this holiday harnessed in that we have to give gifts to each other. If the point of these holidays is religious observation, why do we spend a ridiculous amount of money on people around us to gift things that, in essence, mean nothing in regards to the observation? We also use Christmas as a time for joining family together, because it’s SO important that you’re with your family on Christmas. In most cases, families link up on Christmas Day because we feel it’s something we have to do. What I don’t understand is why we can’t take the time to do that on any ordinary day.

New Year’s Day

This is a fascinating one. I hope most people understand that time is a human concept. It doesn’t actually exist. A year is the time we defined only in regards to one full revolution of the Earth around the sun. And for some reason, people utilize this holiday as a day to begin new all over again… whether that’s starting a new diet, exercising more, let go of bad habits, etc. If that was something you were truly committed to doing, I’d think that the action would begin the day the idea was brought about in your head. People use this day as an excuse to start their lives brand new again when really the decision was always yours to make. You were just too ignorant or lazy to think you could start it any other day. We need a holiday as an excuse, right?

Valentine’s Day

This is the one that really gets to me. It truly makes me sad. No, not in regards that I’m single and it makes me bitter that people have a significant other to share the love with on this day. What blows my mind about this holiday that people go out of their way to make sure their partner feels loved and appreciated on this day. I loathe the Instagram posts of couples with the ooey gooey captions about how special their loved one makes them feel. No, it is not because I am bitter about the sentiment. I am disappointed that people use this holiday as an excuse to make their loved one feel special; I think that’s something that should be done each and every day. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon and buying those dozen roses that nearly every committed person expects on Valentine’s Day, how about getting those roses on a completely random day of the year… just to make them feel good? True love, though I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it, I think should be something felt every minute of every day… not when it’s a popular trend to join in on.

I think the reason why I usually get sad and annoyed around holidays is because I’ve realized that on most mundane days no one stops to think about the reason why we do things. Holidays simply instill a cultural effect for us to think about them...just because everyone else is. Originality is essentially dead in humanity in this regard. We always need a reason or an excuse to do something out of the ordinary for others, ourselves, or our family. I think it’s much more meaningful to practice the traditions these holidays inspire in us on a random day. Because that means you actually thought about it, without any guided cue. You didn’t have to do it just because everyone else was, or because a reminder on your phone calendar came up. Yes, practicing tradition in a temporal manner is all great fun, but perhaps a more significant impact to what these traditions hope to create would be much more meaningful on a day where nobody else did it at all.