February 14, 2024

In Praise of Made-Up Holidays, Especially in February

Yesterday, for the fifteenth year in a row, I made the banana oatmeal pancakes recipe I tore out of Chatelaine Magazine in 2008 when I was six months pregnant and obsessed with bananas. Anything to perk up a Tuesday in the middle of February, which is why I celebrate Pancake Tuesday wholeheartedly. It’s also why I am definitely in Valentines Day too, an occasion marked by my husband and I writing cards to each other, and books and treats for our kids. My husband shows he loves me every single day (I thought of this especially when I came home yesterday morning and he was in the meeting, and my teapot was full and waiting for me, thanks to him) but that doesn’t mean that Valentines Day has to mean nothing. After he dropped our daughter off at school, he came home with a bouquet of tulips from the convenience store, nothing fancy, something wonderful all the same. A made-up holiday, but then what holiday is not a made-up holiday? I reject the idea that we’re incapable of exalting the ordinary, of giving meaning and structure to these days of our lives, that all of us are merely dupes of capitalism or the patriarchy. That any of this must necessarily be about consumerism after all. And of course it should not be obligatory, any of it—I certainly opt out of my share of occasions, the ones that fail to light a spark in me. Doing something because you have to should never be the point, but I also think that it’s possible to inject richness and meaning into all kinds of days throughout the year, the days that appear on the calendar or otherwise. For those of us who live without organized religion, this is especially important, essential, perhaps. And possibly even people of religion need the same reminders not to be merely going through the motions, living by rote.