The August Holiday

The best thing about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the December holiday triumvirate in America is that they make it difficult for November and December to sneak up on us. It’s hard to be unaware of the calendar with all that commercial preparation – advertising, music, and sales, repeatedly presented at high volume – taking place.

That’s the trouble with August in America: no real holiday to mark the calendar. Sure, we have Labor Day at September’s beginning, but it’s one of those nebulous Federal Monday holidays. People often ask each other, “When is Labor Day this year?”, meaning, what day does Labor Day fall on? Then you hit that long stretch from there until Halloween. Days skim by on such untroubled water. Suddenly September has turned to October, and you’re playing catch-up with time.

It’s a game that’s hard to win.