Holidays

New Year's Eve

Dress the cat in bags and break out the plankton sandwiches! Another year is come and gone.
The first child born after the toll of midnight will frequently bear miniature antlers. They recede in the first six months and rarely reappear.

Tocog

Tocog (or 'Gocot') celebrates the arrival of the meatloaf clans. They come to the table dressed to the nines in their formal jacket of glazed pastry or glistening aspic. Who will be named the unrivaled queen of the traditional mixtures?

St. Sebastian's Day

There are explanations for the association of St. Sebastian's Day with gunplay. I am afraid no single explanation will be sufficient. It is inadvisable to go outdoors during St. Sebastian's Day.

April Fool's Day

April Fools are no worse than October or March fools, yet we hang them in effigy from lampposts, and children construct tissue paper voodoo dolls of April fools to flush down the toilet. As recently as the 1930's living fools were still being lynched in maddened towns in isolated parts of the midwest.

The Death of Toyland

Toyland was America's first Utopian community. The characteristic spires and gazebos of Toyland are now taken very much for granted, but were unprecedented in their day, and struck some observers as profound, others as terrifying. Surrounded on three sides by hostile savages, isolated from other settlers by their strange beliefs and unusual practices, the citizens of Toyland took to the sea in rafts in 1822 and were never seen again. Though the Toylanders are little missed, the gradual death of Toyland was an inevitable consequence of their disappearance. Toyland was declared dead in 1956.

Auteur's Day

Directors are recognized as the true authors of films on Auteur's Day.

Arbor Day

George Washington Arbor and Jonathan Livingston Appleseed fought their famous duel on Arbor Day, in 1875. Arbor's words echo whenever lies are told. "I cannot tell the truth, he said. "I hated the man who died beneath the tree, but it was not my bullet that killed him."

Phone Day

Do you have any idea how many phone calls I make on any given morning? I have no need of Phone Day.

Easter

Each year the warm-blooded species hold a week-long festival to honor the passing of the giant lizards who ruled the earth for so many thousands of years. Voles and raccoons attack nested eggs in a reenactment of the original trauma. Will our guilt ever be appeased?
The proponents of Ash Wednesday offer an alternate theory, asserting that it was a gigantic volcanic eruption that exterminated the dinosaurs. In my view this belief is an indulgence.

Halloween

When the children appear at my door I invite them inside. I offer them plankton sandwiches and glasses of tea. Most of them leave quickly, but a few are still living with me, quiet as cats. They sleep in the loft rafters, and sometimes share in the housework and gardening.

Zeno's Day

Zeno's Day grows shorter every year, but it will never completely disappear.

Thankstaking

The vacuum cleaner has replaced the cornucopia in most traditional Thankstaking ceremonies.

Horizon

For seven nights the beehives are moved inside the house. The youngest child will be responsible for asking the bees the ritual questions, the eldest for hiding the honey. No fax machines are to be operated during the week of Horizon.

Christmas

Christmas holds us in its deathly grip. The dictionary defines it as 'the state of one who has committed an offense, esp. consciously' but I do not believe small children who experience Christmas are aware of their culpability. I ask, at what point does Christmas truly live in us? Is it when the men burst in to smother the flaming tree? Is it during the shaping and dressing of the tar baby? No one knows.
We all tremble in the grasp of Christmas. It is unsafe and unfair. We should not have to endure it. There should be a single Christmas, held at a previously agreed location, by a family of actors. It could be broadcast, safely mediated byt the information handlers. Christmas ought to be enacted by astronauts, on the moon, or deep under the sea.

Perhaps the men who don the Santa suit understand Christmas, but they are never permitted inside the house. They gather in tribes under bridges and highways to build fires and eat plankton sandwiches, and their laughter stops whenever anyone comes close enough to hear.

 

Crank, 1997