A month to celebrate

The holidays, though enjoyable, are a great distraction to one's productivity at work. This is of course why we have holidays, to make us forget the mundaneness of our daily lives, but one cannot survive wholly on holidays, although the ancient Romans certainly tried. They had 159 official holidays each year, and everyone so heartily approved of not having to work half the year that they just kept adding holidays, until eventually they had 467 holidays per year, and Caesar had to adjust the calendar so they could fit them all in.

As I was saying, it is easy to get distracted from one's important daily duties during all the festivities. In January, after your have regained consciousness after eating too many cookies, candy, and fruitcake, you can truly refocus on what is important. If you are my department, what is important is to throw yourself enthusiastically into decorating for the next big holiday: Groundhog Day.

We editors are big on decorating. We make cute little faces on paper pumpkins for Halloween. We make cute little faces on paper snowmen for winter. Now, we are gearing up to make cute little faces on paper groundhogs.

At least I assume that is what we will do for Groundhog Day. Amazingly, there is no official protocol for decorating for this particular holiday. We were going to make cute little hearts and sprinkle them liberally around our cubicles in honor of Valentine's Day, but in the midst of our planning and excitement we were informed that the single people among us did not care for the idea of celebrating love. I believe very strong opinions were expressed on the subject. We therefore set about finding a replacement holiday. It was either that or get back to work, and like the Romans, we avoid that as much as possible.

There was some lengthy discussion on which replacement holiday we should choose, because there are an astonishing number of "holidays" in February. National Grapefruit Month. International Flirting Week. Thank a Mailman Day. If you wish to fit even more in, you might start a National Hour, such as National Blame Someone Else Hour.

My personal favorite, which I endorsed to my co-workers, was Spunky Old Broad's Day. I did not exactly have a clear vision for how this might be translated into a decorating opportunity, but it sounded like it might have potential. Some people were of the opinion, however, that this might offend a certain segment of the office population, which I have difficulty understanding, given that the median age of people working there seems to be roughly 7.6 years.

Those of single status who were not fond of the idea of celebrating Valentine's Day might take heart at this: the third week of February is designated as International Flirting Week. As with Spunky Old Broad's Day, I do not know how one might set about decorating for this day, but then that is likely not a concern of those who wish to celebrate it. Of course these two holidays could be combined, which would result in International Flirting With a Spunky Old Broad Day. If this were your type of thing, you might wish to extend it into a whole week.

Then there is International Thinking Day. In our opinion this is not a holiday at all, but a sneaky attempt by administration to make us do some actual work. (Please note that International Thinking Day is generally considered incompatible with International Flirting Day.) We much prefer No Brainer Day, which has long-established roots: At least 83% of the Roman holidays were called No Brainer Day.

February also hosts Return Shopping Carts to the Grocery Store Day. It is unclear whether this means to return them from the parking lot to the store, or from your house to the store.

In the spirit of neighborliness, there is Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day. Another celebration involving waving is Hoodie Hoo Day, which is celebrated only in the northern hemisphere (presumably people in the southern hemisphere also celebrate Hoodie Hoo Day, only in August), wherein people are sick of winter and therefore, according to one Web site, "go out at noon, wave their hands over their head, and chant 'Hoodie hoo' " in an apparent attempt to impress any existing aliens of our complete imbecility. No, actually, this is done in the hopes of chasing away winter and inducing spring to come. To date, this has never been shown to be effective, although the aliens ARE completely convinced of our imbecility.

Too often we humans completely leave out our beloved pets from our celebrations. We therefore have Love Your Pet Day, Walking the Dog Day (which, in our neighborhood, occurs approximately 972 times per day per dog), and International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day.

After exhaustive research, and with very little actual work being accomplished, we in Editing have decided to stick with decorating for Groundhog Day. Our next task will be, in the spirit of the Romans, to lobby to have the day off.