View from the North 40: I have a wish that's bigger than Christmas

Holidays are complicated. Have you ever tried to make one up on your own?

Sure it’s easy to say “That (fill in the blank) is so awesome, everybody should celebrate it as a holiday.” Or “Every day is a holiday if you have the right attitude (insert three exclamation points here).”

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a bonafide, paid day off, happy, happy, joyful day of celebration which every person on the planet can participate in wholeheartedly — guilt- and moral dilemma-free, the same day of the year.

Every country, every religion, all cultures, they have their own holidays that aren’t relevant to everyone else and, let’s face it, sometimes they aren’t even compatible.

Let’s look at a few U.S. holidays and observances that don’t always translate well.

New Year’s Day, it seems pretty neutral — a non-religious and non-political midnight celebration of one year ending the next beginning. No, it’s the trick question on a test. Here are a few reasons why.

In the U.S., most European countries and many other countries, Jan. 1 marks the beginning of the new year. The Chinese people won’t celebrate the new year until our Feb. 12, 2021, and the Buddhists Jan, 28, but the Hebrew New Year begins on our Sept. 6 and in Ethiopia it’s Sept. 11.

If that seems confusing, you’ll love this: We aren’t even all on the same year.

As near as I can fathom by consulting Google and using my sketchy math skills, the current Chinese calendar is on year 4718, Ethiopian calendar 2013, Persian 1399, Buddhist 2563 and Hebrew 5782.

So what about other holidays?

Valentine’s Day? Leaves out the lonely. St. Patrick’s Day? Not good for the teetotalers or some people of the colorblind persuasion. Earth Day or Arbor Day? Now you’re just asking for a fight between the “bunny-huggers” and the “earth-exploiters.” Labor Day? Please, really young people don’t work, retired people are trying to forget about it, and lazy people like me just don’t care for the activity. I’m certainly not going to throw a party for it and invite my friends and family over, unless they want to come do some work for me.

Something like Presidents Day works pretty good in the U.S. because we’ve done all right with our leaders as a whole. But some countries have had some despicable people in charge, suppressing rights, killing citizens by the hundreds of thousands, robbing the coffers blind and leaving economic ruin, causing religious strife and more, so, no, not everyone wants to celebrate their country’s leaders.

We also can’t use a holiday named for a person. My evidence is Columbus Day. One person’s big discovery day is another person’s starting date for centuries of exploitation and genocide. Change it to Indigenous People’s Day and for some folks it becomes why-does-everybody-hate-white-people-now day — and to be fair, the new name does discriminate against the racists.

I want an all inclusive holiday.

Right now, it’s the Christmas holiday, a time of peace, joy, love and togetherness — and people are bickering. “Don’t say happy holidays because that doesn’t acknowledge the reason for the season,” vs. “Christmas is just co-opting every more-fun pagan winter festival ever in the history of mankind.” Plus, the southern hemisphere, where it’s officially summer, so the whole pine-tree, snow-covered landscape and hot chocolate thing doesn’t make sense. And the equator hasn’t seen snow since the last ice age.

The only logical, all-inclusive holiday is the solstice, and as a bonus, we get two per year.

Not the Nordic Yuletide solstice, not the drunken-orgy Saturnalia of old Rome. I mean a good old-fashioned ancient-human solstice from those simpler times when some observant soul said, “Hey, look. When the sun hits this spot, that’s the shortest day of the year, and when it hits here, that’s the longest.”

And the next year, when they realized they were all gathered around to watch the moment the sun hit its mark — prehistoric television at its finest — someone broke out the snacks. Six months later, they planned ahead and had a potluck dinner. It was a big deal — think Stonehenge.

We could have this pre-historic glory again.

Let’s keep Christmas and Hanukkah, Dwali, the Prophet’s Birthday and all other religious, regional, national and cultural holidays. Let’s just have this one holiday that doesn’t care who you are, what you believe, where you live, what your weather is like, who you love, who you hate, who’s in charge or what year it is.

We don’t even need to debate it. It’s solstice, it happens twice a year, for everybody.

The earth spins and tilts back and forth, and we all experience that same moment the sun hits its mark around the globe starting out in the Pacific Island nations and heading west — like the wave in a sports stadium — spreading until solstice day’s end, back in the Pacific Ocean.

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