Bertha’s Bakers Dozen ™: Holiday Traditions I Just Don’t Get

     I love holidays.  Any excuse to throw a party, have people over, or celebrate something is OK by me.  I love our traditions and the silly personalized bits we have added to them over the years.  But have you ever stopped to ponder the origins of our traditions?  I have.  I never thought about how silly some of this seems until I sat down and pondered.  (I use my time wisely.)  

     Well, Letterman has his ten; Bertha has her Bakers Dozen … and this time, it’s the Holiday Traditions I Just Don’t Get list:

13) “Happy New Year!  Let’s get plastered while we watch every goober in Times Square drop to one knee and propose.”     

12) “Happy St. Valentine’s Day!  Here’s some overpriced flowers and a box of stale chocolate because I need a greeting card company to remind me that I love you.”   

11) “St. Patrick’s Day.  Why bother remembering a sainted missionary when we can all pretend to be Irish and get plastered on green beer?!  Blarney!”      

10) “Happy Easter!  Let’s go to church for the first time since Christmas.  Then we can go to grandma’s house to eat ham and make total idiots of ourselves playing ‘Hide-n-Seek’ with empty plastic eggs.”

9) “We’re expecting triplets!  And I’m not sure if they belong to my husband.  And our house burned down.  And your shoe is untied.  April Fools!  Wait ... what’s with the gun?  I was just kidding!  I’m sorry!!”         

8) “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  Would you rather we destroy the kitchen making dinner so you can clean half the night, or would you rather stand in line for 2 hours waiting on a sub-par buffet that ran out of prime rib before we got here?  This is your day so we’ll let you decide.  Take your time.”       

7) “Happy Father’s Day, Dad!  I hope you can stay awake long enough to open this necktie.  It looks like the one we gave you last year except the stripe is diagonal instead of horizontal.  Dad?  Great.  He fell back asleep.”  

6) “Hey!  It’s your birthday!  Let’s embarrass you with a horrible, off-key song, set your dessert on fire, and clap while you blow on it!”         

5) “It’s the Fourth of July!  Let’s celebrate our independence!  We’ll cook meat outside then set stuff on fire.  But be sure to bring an umbrella ... it’s rained every single July Fourth since the twelfth century BC.”      

4) “It’s Labor Day.  Let’s celebrate our employment by not going.” 

3) “Boo!  Happy Halloween!  To celebrate spookiness and being scared, I’m going to dress up like a hooker ... or a nun with a ruler ... or a Trekkie ... That oughta scare the pants off anybody.”        

2) “It’s Thanksgiving, time to remember all we have and be grateful for it.  But if they make me eat dark meat, or sit next to Cousin Hester, or if they put garlic butter on those rolls again, I’m storming out.”         

1) “Merry Christmas!  I can’t quite remember your name, but I went into debt buying this pre-assembled gift basket of cheap chocolate and stinky bubble bath.  Wait ... your name is Pamela?  Oh that basket is for somebody else.  Here’s the plastic/vinyl picture frame I got for you.”      

© Bertha Grizzly 2012.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.