A New Holiday

‘Tis the season. 

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

For all you non-Christmas believers let me just say you’re all a bunch of losers. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Not in the poor sportsmanship kind of way or even a “my god’s better than yours” kind of way but in a “you have lost the battle” kind of way. Lost the battle to that juggernaut that is Corporate Christmas steam-rolling its way in to town flattening any and all in its path. 

Oh sure we stuck that one blue ornament on the tree. And maybe even put up one of those funky candelabra things and a random picture of that wooden top too in the name of inclusiveness. But other than that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. By which I mean, a whole hell of a lot like Christmas.  Not that non-denominational “holiday season” version of Christmas, either. I mean Christmas with a capital K (technically C, I know, but the alliteration was too much to pass up).

Yup. You can’t escape it. The Christmas songs on the radio. Christmas trees in every store / school / business.  Red and green wrapping paper on the office walls. Garland and tinsel hanging from every orifice surface.  Reindeer nose and antlers on our SUVs. To paraphrase Eddie Murphy paraphrasing Gumby, “It’s Christmas, dammit”.

But isn’t there some other holiday in December, you ask? [A slight digression here. I’m not talking about Kwanzaa.  I mean seriously? First, never trust a holiday that is younger than you are. And second, there are more* Google hits for Festivus,  a semi-fictional holiday, than there are for Kwanzaa.  You Kwanzites need better lobbyists or an iPhone app or something.] (*Note: actual search results may vary had I bothered to actually check this out.)

Yes, there is another December holiday of note. But the poor Hanukkah/Chanukah crowd has had their quiet little celebration crushed under the raging momentum of Christmas, Inc.  Big bully Christmas, along with his enforcers Black Friday and Cyber Humpday [Ed.’s Note: I think that’s actually a completely different web event.], have turned our every waking hour into countdown to Santa. There is just no hope for Hanukkah/Chanukah with the kind of mass media onslaught that is Christmas today.  That’s why it’s time to move on. You’ve lost the battle, but you haven’t lost the war.

So here’s the idea:  I give you, wait for it,  Hannuween. Combine Hanukkah/Chanukah with Halloween and move out from under the shadow of the 800 pound gorilla and his eight tiny reindeer.

Here are the top reasons why Hannuween will work:

1.       It has a built-in, easily swayed worldwide audience. No one really remembers what the hell Halloween was really ever about anymore. You won’t have all those namby-pamby religious groups getting all upset about the” true meaning” if you co-opt the holiday.

2.       It changes Hanukkah/Chanukah into something that kids can a) understand, and b) care about. Kids are our future. At least some of them are. Others are helping keep our new prisons full or Auto-Tune’ing the news but still, kids make holidays happen. If you don’t believe me then Happy May Day to you. What’s that you say, never celebrated May Day? You don’t have a May pole at your workplace? “Yay! Streamers.”  Yeah, I didn’t think so. Sugar, shopping and over consumption, that’s the American way.

3.       Eight days of trick or treating.  Compare and contrast this with 8 days of candle watching and latkes (no offense, other than the obvious, intended toward anyone’s specific latke recipe). Or, for the small business owners in the audience, we could go with 8 days of gift giving if we want to spread the retail gorging around throughout the year. (Real gifts by the way. Not pencils and candles and crap like that. DTVs. iPads. The Lexus Hannuween Event. Think big here.)

4.       And finally, we’re going to pick one spelling and stick to it. This is pretty basic, isn’t it? It’s Google. It’s not Google sometimes and other times Ghoogle. We don’t celebrate Christmas and Kristmaas (which is good because that’s actually an IKEA table and chair set). Enough with the Hanukkah/Chanukah nonsense. It’s Hannuween. Period. For those of you keeping score at home I went with two “n’s” to evoke the twin “l’s” of the original Halloween name but kept the accurate, though poorly pronounced, “u” as the second syllable.

 So, there you have it. It’s time for our (and by “our” I really mean “your”) little holiday to leave the nest and strike out on its own. All it needs is the right viral video, a couple celebrity tweets, a mention at an award show somewhere and a guest appearance on Glee and we’ll have this sucker launched.