May 18, 2012 Throwback blog post.

Prelude: I’m still opinionated about holidays. I have many more ideas on how each holiday could be improved. I have an active imagination, and reinventing holidays is how I exercise it.

May 18, 2012: The stress of relaxation.

Victoria Day is coming up. Very excited about this. I am hosting a themed bbq potluck and I have asked people to show up wearing mini crowns and sashes. Queen Victoria’s favourite cake is reported to have been the Nutella Cake, so I am making that on Sunday night right after I finish draping the apartment in silk brocade. Monday night promises to end with a bang from the leftover fireworks from Chinese New Year.

Not really.

What do we do for this holiday anyway? Go somewhere for the weekend, right? What does that have to do with the late Queen Victoria? I tried looking for a parade scheduled to happen somewhere (thanks to my proximity to the downtown core, I frequently find my commute routes blocked off), but there is none. I suppose because it would just make getting out of town for the weekend even more troublesome.

British Columbia just adopted Family Day. It’s like Valentine’s Day, but instead of making singles feel like crap, it makes orphans feel like crap. Likewise, instead of chocolate and cinnamon hearts, it’s Old Dutch ruffled chips and fruit punch. The main difference, though, is that it will be a statutory holiday. The premier even let us choose the day we wanted it to fall on; unfortunately, rather than let us choose from 355 (less the 10 pre-existing holidays) wonderful days, it’s either the second or the third Monday of February. I voted “Either is OK” which I found to be a funny option as it translates to “I don’t care, AND I want you to know it.”

My point? I like Victoria Day and the idea of a new statutory holiday, but holidays are getting less and less inspired. It all started with the bizarre holiday of Christmas and its springtime spin-off, Easter, which both involve chocolate and weird rituals. What I would like to see is for Halloween to be made into a statutory holiday. It’s the one day of the year when I need the time off to do my makeup.

So, how can we make Victoria Day stand out among the exciting array of Canadian holidays? For starters, I would forbid parades from happening. These days, parades are composed of a bunch of employees advertising the company they work for with a giant banner, or by driving a corporate logo-shaped float. Forget that. How about, along with BC Day, we also get Bee Day? I propose an eighteen-wheeler full of angry bees open its door in the middle of Robson Street. It’ll be like the Running of the Bulls, but with bees! Pretty sure I could get EpiPen to back up my idea. The colour scheme is already obvious, and Hollywood already has movies about bees such as Bee Movie.

Happy Victoria Day!