I have no idea what cavemen did for holidays, if they had any. Maybe take a day off from hunting mastodons. The ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to handle them quite well, at least according to ancient paintings and gladiator movies.
The winter ones have always seemed extra special to me. Summer holidays, which governments have forcefully turned into three-day weekends, you expect to be nice, good weather, sunshine. The winter, not so much, at least in the snow belt around Cleveland, where I grew up.
Back then, we had two presidential holidays in February, as long as the Lincoln and Washington birthdays fell on school days.
And though Valentine's Day required grade school attendance, it was mostly a party time with cupcakes, punch, and trading little handmade cards. The ones from the lazy boys had simple crayon scribbles. The Valentines from little girls had paper-lace and flowers.
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. It came. Family did, too. I had to crumble the stuffing bread. We ate too much. And it was over. No worrisome buildup. No deluge of bills the next month.
We just marked the 404th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing. Storms crossing the wintry North Atlantic delayed the arrival of their tiny ship until after Thanksgiving. So, the first official one wasn't until 1621. It lasted three days, even without football game commercials.
Now comes the Big Holiday, Christmas. The original religious meaning has gotten eclipsed in some ways, and Dec. 25th was turned into a weeks-long commercial orgy. My grandmother came from Canada for that one, which made it very special indeed.
For fun years ago, I interviewed a class of Japanese preschoolers early one December. I asked if a kindly old man was coming soon. They all yelled, "Grandpa!"
New Year's is the Big Holiday there. It lasts a week as families gather. We did eventually get around to Santa Claus that afternoon. They told me he delivers lots of toys that he buys at fancy department stores, and he lives in Thailand. Or maybe China. They knew nothing about the North Pole or elves making toys there.
I asked when Santa Claus visits. They were uncertain. Sometime in December, they decided. One little girl raised her hand. "Claus-san comes on the last Sunday in December," she said.
Turns out, she was the only Christian in the class. Work weeks were six days long then. So, her parents set Christmas on a Sunday, Dad's lone day off. And that year, it happened to fall on Dec. 25th.
This week's audio commentary examines some of our fading Christmas traditions. Please join in the discussion on holiday traditions in the Comments below.
This week's Sunday column was about Donald Trump being named Time magazine's "Man of the Year." (The iconic publication's latest owner is a Trump fan and another tech billionaire.) It's a revealing and entertaining story, in part because it drove the Left crazy.
But even more interesting is how these publication honors come about and what they might mean. Also, why exactly do they always seem to come out around the end of a calendar year?
The most recent audio commentary detailed the ongoing assembly of President Trump's new team and the members' admirable determination to murder the social cancer of Woke.
Finally, my RedState colleague Becca Lower has the details on an important developing story. The Supreme Court has accepted an appeal by the Chinese-owned social media giant ByteDance, which owns TikTok. Congress has set a January deadline for the app to sell its ownership of all operations in the United States or be banned.
There's a lot of money at stake, not to mention freedom of speech. And then there's the worrisome national security reality that TikTok provides China with the biographies and granular interests of nearly 122 million Americans, right down to the subjects that interest them and how many seconds each user watches every video they click on.
