Festivals

One of the things that is very noticeable about living in America is how much more effort they put into celebrating festivals. Houses are decorated, schools have parties, the ‘seasonal’ aisles in stores are filled with appropriate merchandise (although that happens well in advance of the festival itself, as if those aisles are in their own private time zone).

My personal theory is that we don’t need the excitement of festivals so much in Britain, as our school year is organized differently. We are never more than a few weeks away from a holiday (Christmas, Easter, summer) or half-term. If you need something to look forward to – and don’t we all? – then you have lots of scope to arrange a day out, a trip, a visit to or from relations, a holiday, something to break up the routine. Over here, there’s a 2-week Christmas holiday, a week’s Spring break, and otherwise, all the school holiday is in a great long 12-week stretch over the summer. (I know I've talked about this before so I'm sorry to be repetitive, but it really does make such a big difference to life.) There are occasional days off, but it’s just not the same as having a long week-end, or a half-term week. I mean to say, if your children returned to school on August 17th, and their only break before Christmas was 3 days holiday in late November, wouldn’t you need a few events to get excited about?

Each festival has a colour associated with it. At the time of the relevant festival, the stores have a rash of that colour dotted through them. Cupcakes have the theme colour icing, there are a couple of racks of children's clothing in it, there'll be a sprinkling of it in the adult clothing section too, homewares will sport the colour in paper plates, tableclothes, napkins, and candles, and there'll be plenty of novelty goods spattered around in that same colour too. I was thinking about this, and I reckon every feasible colour is accounted for. Here’s the list:

Valentine’s Day: red and pink
St Patrick’s Day: green
Easter: yellow (and pastel shades generally)
Memorial Day and Fourth of July: red, white and blue
Hallowe’en: orange, black and purple
Christmas: green and red.

It really only leaves brown and grey unused. They’re not very festive colours, so it’s not surprising. I suppose Labor Day could adopt them, to represent the drudgery of work. But I have a better plan for them. I’m working on a ‘British Day’ celebration when we could put them to use. It would have to be 4th January, ie the opposite to 4th July. The grey would symbolize the British weather, and the brown the British countryside, (ideally we’d want to use green for that, but that’s already taken by St Patrick and the Irish and in January, the British countryside is more brown than green anyway).

I think I’m going to have an uphill battle getting this one universally adopted, especially so soon after the Christmas season. On the other hand, those seasonal aisles are pretty purposeless in January. It’s a good six weeks till Valentine’s Day. I’m sure the major retailers would welcome a January festival. No-one will have grey and brown paraphernalia stored away in their closets, so this would present an opportunity for significant new purchasing. Perhaps I should write to Target and Wal-mart and see if I can get something started (and yes, I know I’d have to spell it ‘gray’ for their benefit).

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