Notes: Novus Ordo Seclorum

WE HAVE REACHED that time of year, with the winter festivities finally behind us and the drear of February to the fore, when the people I know tend to concede privately what we ought to acknowledge publicly: that our system of holidays, established willy-nilly over the course of two centuries, is in a state of disrepair. Some of our holidays—Columbus Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day—have become unmoored not only from their traditional dates of observation (by act of Congress, so that they can be welded into three-day weekends) but also from any real substance. For most people, they are little more than days off. Other holidays— Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents’ Day—are bunched too close together. One passes them like kidney stones, and is overcome, right around now, by the relief of pain suddenly abated. No, the system that has evolved is not one that a sensible nation would invent. And while Americans are not always a sensible people, there are a few corrective steps that even we might take.

Let’s first recognize the few holidays that function properly: Easter/Passover, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas/Hanukkah. No one tinkers with the dates on which they fall, and everyone pays at least lip service to each holiday’s intrinsic high purpose. They are engaging in other ways. The Fourth of July and Christmas, being affixed to specific dates, fall on different days of the week in successive years, offering variety in the holiday configurations. How glorious it is when the Fourth falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, inviting a four-day weekend. Easter and Thanksgiving, for their part, though affixed to specific days of the week, roam across the calendar like shortstops, sometimes playing in, sometimes on the edge of the far grass. Passover and Hanukkah are more unpredictable still, varying from year to year both by date and by day of the week. All these holidays have a strong ritual component that transcends commercialization. Two of them, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, are the occasion of sporting events of the most appealing kind: the daylight double-header and the high school football game. There is nothing not to like about these holidays.

They stand in sharp contrast to New Year’s, which is an occasion of hollow cheer and fake bonhomie, and comes too hard upon the heels of Christmas. New Year’s Day is misplaced. Psychologically, the new year begins not on January 1 but on September 1, and we should adjust our calendars accordingly. Of course, Labor Day would then be too close to New Year’s, so let’s move it to the first Monday in October, and let’s have the following Tuesday be the new day when income taxes must be paid. The proximity of tax day to Labor Day could hardly be more appropriate, and many of us could use a long weekend before the filing deadline. (The World Series should start that weekend too.) Having to pay taxes in October would, admittedly, leave us feeling a little poorer in December, but that might be to the good.

With New Year’s moved out of the way, relieving some of the congestion, Martin Luther King Day could stay where it is, on the third Monday of January. I admit to being pleasantly surprised by Martin Luther King Day, which in the five years of its official existence has been observed with highmindedness and dignity. But it is wispy; it lacks a certain heft. That problem could be solved by arranging for the final National Football League playoff games to be held on the Saturday and Sunday directly preceding it. Martin Luther King Day’s relative stature would be further enhanced if we canceled the Super Bowl, which is rarely as good as the playoffs and is in any case grotesque. (The playoff winners could simply flip a coin.) Finally, Martin Luther King Day needs some sort of familial or collective rite. Perhaps it could be a day devoted to good works on the community’s behalf, when nobody rests until dinner.

Moving on: Memorial Day should be kept as a holiday, but it needs some refurbishing. Do most people stop for very long on Memorial Day to contemplate what this observance is actually about? Or is Memorial Day just an excuse to go lie in the sun? We all know the answers to those questions. That’s why Veteran’s Day should be moved back from November to reinforce its martial cousin, and why the pair should be celebrated together, on the first rainy day after the last Sunday in May. Fixing the date to a rainy day has several advantages. It means that the holiday would be observed on different days in different parts of the country— and would serve, therefore, as a symbolic bulwark against encroaching homogeneity. It means that communities would often be taken by surprise as they awoke of a morn—a delightful prospect. And it means that the Memorial Day parade would be sodden— a mild yet effective reminder that military service is no day at the beach.

Presidents’ Day is a joke, and so is Columbus Day. By now the only thought given to Lincoln, Washington, and Columbus on the holidays meant to honor them is how to use images of their faces to sell merchandise, chiefly linens and underwear. Presidents’ Day should be disposed of at once. Columbus Day likewise deserves oblivion, but perhaps could be granted a reprieve until after the quincentennial of its namesake’s landfall. In effect, 1992 will be Columbus Year, with commemorations somewhere, of some sort, on each of its 366 days—grounds enough, surely, to suspend the holiday for the next 366 years. If people in A. D. 2358 want to reinstate it, fine.

Taking the places of Presidents’ Day in February and Columbus Day in October would be a calendrical innovation, loosely based on Daylight Saving Time, called Sanity Saving Time. It would work like this. Every February, on a day to be selected randomly— perhaps by giving Dr. Joyce Brothers an opaque jar holding twenty-seven black marbles and one red one, and asking her to pick out one marble each February morning on the Today show— the date would suddenly spring forward by a week. If Dr. Brothers picked the red marble on February 9, for example, the day would instantly turn into February 16. A week’s worth of obligations would disappear—and, what is more, February would pass 25 percent faster than it does now. In many years we would also be spared the psychological burden of Valentine’s Day. Adults would be given the option of not counting any missed birthdays, and children could reschedule theirs for any day they chose. Similarly, on a randomly selected day in October we would fall back by a week—on the 20th, say, we could suddenly find ourselves on the 13th again—and enjoy a welcome breather at a splendid time of year, along with, frequently, an automatic extension for filing our taxes.

Some of these suggestions would entail the occasional dislocation. The fact that our calendar, owing to Sanity Saving Time, would be out of synch with that of the rest of the world between February and October is one cause for concern. Strong U.S. leadership, however, could persuade many countries to adopt our system. One motto that appears on every dollar bill is Novus ordo seclorum—“A new order of the ages.” It’s time we lived up to it.

—Cullen Murphy