X-Festikwanzaaweenikah

I have long maintained that if God had wanted us to celebrate Christmas on December 25, he would not have made Fall Semester grades due in December. Oh, of course that's not my only problem. There's also every level of public education deciding it would be nice to have a holiday-time concert extravaganza, in which my children participate extravagantly. Throw in a few church functions, and you've got an effective barricade to our family having a timely and joyous Christmas.

I will admit that all this seems to affect my family more than others. But the fact remains: here it is, the day after Christmas, and we have about 1/3 of our Christmas lights up, half of our tree decorations up, NO goody plates distributed to neighbors and friends, and an unacceptably small amount of wrapping paper left over from yesterday's festivities, all because we just didn't have time. Or energy. Or perhaps money, but that's beside the point.

So as a family we decided, as we often do with birthdays, to postpone the real party to a later date, in this case, January 24. Our problem has been what to call the celebration. We could just borrow a holiday, of course, but the problem with all the existing holidays is that they occur mostly in December, which doesn't really address our issue at all. Kwanzaa, for example, is held from December 26 through January 1 (although it does have the strong support of the Boy Child mainly because he wants to wear a cool hat).



And of course, we are about as African American as Thor Heyerdahl.

In the tradition of made-up holidays, there is also Festivus. It is more philosophically aligned with what we are tying to accomplish, having been created by a single family for their own purposes (though popularized by one of their sons, who wrote for Seinfeld). It also has the advantage of requiring only a single aluminum pole for decoration:

A commercially available Festivus Pole kit. Really.

But alas, it too is celebrated in December, in fact, usually on December 23, so we've already missed it. Admittedly, the traditional Airing of Grievances may have livened things up a bit.

Hanukkah runs from December 21 - 29 this year. Also I really like bacon. Also the note above about Thor Heyerdahl applies here too.

Which brings us to Decemberween. It does have the right feel to it, what with Brundo the Decemberween Yak and the Sword of St. Olaf. At least St. Olaf sounds Scandinavian. But once again, we are thwarted by the fact that clearly, Decemberween is celebrated 55 days after Halloween, placing it on December 25 (although, apparently, it can be celebrated in July, time permitting ("Decemberween, Decemberween, you're 7 months after you should've been...").

(L to R: Strong Bad as Archibald, Bubs as Dr. Christmas, Marzipan as The Angel, and Homestar Runner as The King of Town)

So that's the problem. Nothing really captures the spirit of our family celebration and occurs naturally in January. And before you leave this blog and run off to Google, let me just say I've tried that already. January 24 is Beer Can Appreciation Day. No good.

So we need some help. I need my faithful readers (both of you) to help us name our holiday. Procrastivus? Winterween? Januarymas? Also, an idea for some official decorations might help, so we can take our Christmas tree down.



The lucky reader whose idea we end up using will be promised a place at our table for the traditional X-Festikwanzaaweenikah dinner of . . . I don't really know. Spaghettios? But don't let that stop you.