Top 10 Holidays that don't exist.

You've heard it from me before. Valentines Day is a non Holiday. Well, it's not the only one. There are tons. Columbus Day, Arbor Day, Mothers Day, St Patricks Day. Any holiday that doesn't give me a day off with pay is not a holiday, it's just a day with a name.

So these are Holidays that aren't officially on any calendar and yet get celebrated. Believe me, If I got a day off for Valentines day, I would be all over it. Ahh the heady feeling as you buy overpriced chocolates and roses. mmmmm...the sweet anticipation of obligatory affection. Wait a minute, I already went on way too long about that.

What ARE holidays however, are those 'personal' days that you get from your company. Every company is different, but on average, your sick/personal days are the ones you get every year that you will be paid for if you use them, but they evaporate at the end of the year if you don't. Of course you usually have to have some kind of excuse to take those days, or you don't have a lot of work on the hook. So you need a day off, but you don't have an illness, what do you do? The following are a list of holidays that are less known but could be more celebrated than real holidays.

10. Son of Hippocrates Day - Ferris Bueller's Day off. What a great movie. I loved it every time I saw it. It made a great study of calling sick into school. Not only did it give you a blueprint on the proper way of playing sick, it told you in no uncertain terms that these days were not to be WASTED. Well that was school, now you are at work. You look out of your window as the playful warm breeze wafts into your bedroom and realize that God simply does not want you to go lock yourself up in a cubicle today he want's you to enjoy the day...but how do you get there? you aren't really sick... your kids! nobody suspects or can verify wether or not your offspring are ill. It's the perfect ploy! You blame the kids and burn the day! Freedom at last. Used with infrequency, it is a nearly endless font of free day passes. Of course if your children are actually sick you use this day as well. The LAST thing anyone needs is their kids at home alone without supervision. Unless of course you enjoy seeing your Ice cream melted on the kitchen counter and several rather odd Pay-Per-View choices.

9. Frank Lloyd Wrightsmass - Any Home improvement will spur the use of a personal day. They are coming in to install cable/satellite. They always give you that 'we will be in some time after 8, but before 4:30 but not around noon, and only if we feel like it'. So you gotta burn a day doing it. Sprinklers, Gas Main, painting the house, we will take a day to do this. Here's the funny thing, if it's something like getting a new service, people aren't nearly as sympathetic on the day off thing as they are with say...a pipe bursting! The structural integrity of your house is at stake! Termites! Hole in the roof! All are good excuses and will warrant that precious personal day.

8. Feast of Moses...The Lawgiver - We civic minded people know that laws are there to protect us and our health. Were it not for laws we would descend into a morass of moral and physical wretchedness that could only be rivaled by illicit dancing. You Protestants know what I'm talking about. If, at some point, you run afowl of the local constabulary, you will be required to appear at court not sooner than 5 days and no later than 15 days from this day. I'm not sure why this is, but I think it's so you can have time to reflect and think about the shambles your life has become since your decision to lead a life of crime. 7 miles over indeed! You'll need a day to get to your local county seat in order to straighten out your situation and make your record white as driven snow once again. The other reason is Jury Duty. Some companies will actually give you separate and extra days if you are called for jury duty. so the hope is that you burn a day getting chosen and then on the day you are there, they dismiss the case. you are off the hook and you get a free day! EXCELLENT!

7. Weekend Eve - Who doesn't like the real holidays? Especially Thanks Giving. A lovely day between Halloween and Christmas that is a great family get together/fight holiday. Great except for that Friday that is. I gotta go BACK to work?! Who decided that Thursday was a good holiday day? Enter Weekend Eve. That Friday between the day off and the weekend. Nearly everyone takes this day, but Weekend Eve can be used any time you want to extend that holiday one more day. Thank you pagans for inventing weekend eve. Thank you. Because of you, I can stuff my fool face so full of turkey that I probably won't wake up until Sunday afternoon.










6. Florence Flatus Day - We've all had the problem where we were sick, but not sick enough to not go to work. But still, something just wasn't right. Was it that multi-grain 3 bean burrito with a side-car of liquid fiber? or was it that piece of leftover in the fridge that you really couldn't quite put your finger on. Whatever it was, the result is the same. More constant gas than the Alaska pipeline. They will be naming a candle fragrance after you...cranberry coverup. You want to go into work, but you know that you are in for a day of avoiding your co-workers and doing the one cheek sneak to the bathroom. You can go to work, but the truth is, once your office chair has reached it's saturation point, everyone in the office is in mortal peril. You should be given an extra day off, just for sparing your co-workers your particular scent.






5. Dead Spouse's Relative Day - no, no, no, I'm not talking about your mother in law actually dying. I'm talking about the believable excuse. The key to this excuse is the following 'Yeah, even though she was her great aunt, they were really close' Few people ever really talk about their spouses extended family. But If I did, that would be a WHOLE other blog. Just a sec, I gotta write that down...Anyway, nobody will question that you need a day off to assist your spouse in their grief. You only want to invoke this holiday if your company is not particularly compassionate. If they are, they will be sending flowers to a non existent funeral. Then the jigs up. This could be the kind of thing that gets you kicked off the party committee.
This day is also used when you have relatives that have invited you to their wedding and you are just close enough you are obligated to attend. That's when you hope you can get away with dropping by, eating some white sheet cake. Say congratulations to the older gentleman in the ill fitting suit and get out to enjoy the rest of the day.




4. Dudley Memorial Day - The weekend comes and you've got friends that are coming in from out of town. You know those friends. The ones that you stayed up all night playing the most intriguing drinking game you invented while watching Star Trek the Next Generation. Every time the Captain said 'ENGAGE' you took another shot, and a double shot whenever Worf said 'they have no honor' Ahhh those were the days. Well they are back in town and you will relive some old memories in a slightly older vessel. Come Sunday night you wish you had remembered the lessons learned in your youth. You are going to call in sick, but really, you'd rather not, but you will. The good news is, you will feel and sound more than sick enough to avoid a day of work. The bad news is, this illness you could have easily avoided by not drinking alcohol like some kind of cheeze eatin teenager.

3. St Chevy's Day - You've been planing this trip for the last 8 months. A cross country trip from wherever you live in Armpit USA to Wally World in sunny California, or Super Wally World in Orlando Florida. It will be a 10 day trip in all and you've invited your brother and his family along for the fun. It will be a trip that everyone will remember and likely hold grudges about for the rest of your life. When you get back from this 'holiday' you are an absolute idiot if you don't call in a sick day for the day after you get back. You have to have a day to recover from this kind of adventure. In the movies, people are indefatigable, in real life, you will be exhausted by around day 5 and probably dead by day 10.

2. The Festival of Lee Iacocca - The fresh plastic smell of a new car dashboard. The chemically protected smell of the upholstery. We all know that the bottle of 'new car smell' that you've been dousing your Dodge Dart in has never really smelled like a new car and the fact is you needed a new car when you realized that the ghost of what your dog ate still emanates from the heating vents where he left it. This will take a day, and in that day, you will feel rushed and taken advantage of in all the ways that matter. In the end you will have a new car that your dog will not get in for at least 2 months and probably your kids for 2 weeks. You will not personally eat food in this vehicle until the NEXT weekend. When you come back from the Lee Iacocca festival, you will show your co-workers the car you have started to make payments on. The temporary liscense plate marring an otherwise perfect visage of driving perfection. Yup you need at LEAST a day for this.

1. Oscar Appreciation Day - This doesn't count as an actual day off, this is when lunch goes long. More specifically lunch turns into a 2 hour movie. Those of you that are lucky enough to live close to a theater will know this holiday intimately. It is VERY easy to come up with 1-2 hour excuses that will cover up the fact that you want to see a movie that your spouse really would not be caught dead seeing, but that your like minded co-workers have been itching for an excuse to make a critical review. The great thing about a movie in the middle of work is it really breaks up the day nicely, it really flies by.









Thanks for reading! And special props for my consistent readers! Bill (thanks for the avatar!), Tracy (Scoops! you were there from near the start!), Dave H (DIO!!!!), Larissa (the swashbucklinest pirate ever landlocked), Shannon (I still don't understand slyrpycow), Mikey (remember that trip to Wally World? I wonder if dad took a day off afterwards...). If you are a consistent reader and I didn't mention you. THANKS! I appreciate it, I just don't know who you are. But I probably have a good Idea who you aren't.