Bah Humbug

I really, really hate commodified holidays when you still have to go to work. If you give me a day-off I'll happily go along with almost any kind of nonsense as part of the payment for the day off ('so you're telling me that because of this guy duying we eat spherical chocolate and hot-cross buns, as part of spring festival that happens in Autumn? Sounds good to me'). But if shops are going to set up perfectly ridiculous displays in order to sell me perfectly ridiculous stuff, and there's no day off involved, I get cranky.

So this is a bad time of year, what with Halloween and Guy Fawkes one after the other. Both are pretty stupid and irrelevant as far as rituals go (although SNAP has a good article about November 5 also being a significant event in New Zealand History), as well as being in the wrong season.

What New Zealand actually needs is more Public Holidays, by world standards 11 is a very puny number, particularly as two of them don't get Monday-ised. I think the easiest way to bring one in would be to celebrate something right-wingers and conservatives think is really cool and I find repugnant, and then that might blunt the whining about time and a half. If I was in America I think I'd propose Ronald Regan day. The best I can think of here is "All Black day". The important thing is for the public holiday to fall sometime between Queen's Birthday and Labour Day. So I guess ideally I want someone truly evil who was born, or died, in July, August or September.

Any ideas?