The United States (and the world for that matter) seems to have far too many holidays for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I like holidays; but Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, Sweetest Day and many of the rest to me are little more than “Hallmark Holidays,” designed to encourage the purchase of flowers, candy, presents and, of course, Hallmark cards specifically prepared for the occasion. They are, furthermore, holidays which are abused beyond all reason or need by the retail industry to create artificial reasons to purchase items that have nothing to do with the holiday in question. (After all, why else would I buy furniture, a TV or a car because of a “Presidents Day” sale?)

This is not to say that all such holidays are not deserving of our love and recognition. Creating a special holiday to celebrate special people, who are deserving of our consideration every day of the year, might be just a little more than is necessary, however.

I believe that upon the publishing of these first two paragraphs, many will misunderstand my intent and find reason either to comment either to themselves (always a sound philosophy when done silently), to those around them (who are probably are less interested in the subject at hand) or to the Toledo Free Press online comment section or Letters to the Editor in violent opposition to the sentiments that I have expressed. That, of course, is their right, and I would encourage them to do so (especially in the last way, as it lets those in charge know that someone is reading this stuff.)

I say this, however, because in spite of my assertion that there are too many of these events, I am about to add insult to the injury I have thus far stated. I would like to add yet another Hallmark Holiday to the list for this year, and I can’t think of a better occasion for it.

You see, June 26-28 is exactly the halfway point between Father’s Day and the Fourth of July. One of these holidays, of course, should be extremely important to the citizens of the United States, the other … maybe not so much. However, in light of the government’s current open disregard at best and trampling at worst of the document that is one of the two most important documents in the United States, The Constitution, I would like to create a holiday for those who wrote it. In the spirit of the document whose creation began 222 years ago, and the one that we celebrate but a week later (the Declaration of Independence, of course), I would like to create “Founding Fathers’ Day.”

Retail outlets would have an excuse to hold another sale at a time when there is traditionally little going on in retail, whether it has anything to do with the holiday or not. We could have an additional weekend to shoot off fireworks, which would help their sales. (Besides, nothing says patriotism like things exploding, right?) And of course, Hallmark could create hundreds of different kinds of Founding Fathers’ Day cards that we could send to each other.

Perhaps in the process of executing our assigned duties as part of the rampant consumerism expected of each and every one of us during this new (and every other) Hallmark Holiday, we could even perform a useful function by distributing copies of the documents which seem to be suffering from so much recent abuse, and which so few Americans (and even fewer of the Americans in government apparently) seem to be even mildly familiar with.

And so I say to each of you on this latest of festive weekends: Happy Founding Fathers’ Day!

Tim Higgins blogs at justblowingsmoke.blogspot.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Just Blowing SMoke, Opinion.
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