It's October.
Or as they sometimes call it, 🎃Spooktober🎃.
It's Halloween in less than 3 weeks!
The home stretch of the year is always jam-packed with holidays- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and then New Year's.
As we creep into the "'tis the Season" festivities, I've compiled a list of major holidays, and ranked them accordingly based on how much I enjoy them. If I don't include your favorite holiday, it probably means that either your holiday sucks or my family doesn't personally celebrate it. If it's the latter, then I'm sure it is a wonderful holiday.
8. St. Patrick's Day
Ha-ha! You're not wearing green! *pinch*
That's the full extent of St. Pat's. Weak! For us high schoolers at least. Maybe once when we're in college it'll be fun, if we go to the U of I, that is. Being honest, I forgot this holiday existed at first, until someone told me I should mention it. Easy last place though.
7. Thanksgiving
This may be a hot take, but Thanksgiving is the MOST OVERRATED holiday of all time. "But what about the amazing feast!?" you may screech in indignant fury. Honestly, I don't even like turkey or salads or cranberry sauce. If you know me at all, you'll know that I almost exclusively eat either pizza or burgers and fries. On Thanksgiving, I'm actually eating less food than normal. I like watching Thanksgiving football, but in reality you can watch football any Sunday, or even Saturday if you like NCAAF. Also, I'm one of the sweaty try-hards who voluntarily runs a mile in the freezing cold morning every Thanksgiving. Why? I have no idea. This holiday's only positive is 5 day weekend.
6. New Year's
New Year's is pretty underwhelming unless you're one of three things: an adult trying to get wasted, a third grader who can't wait to stay up past his bedtime, or someone in a quality romantic relationship. Also, you know how everyone sets themselves resolutions, but never follows them past January? I don't think I can even REMEMBER any of mine, except like 5 years ago when I resolved to become really good at League of Legends. Oof.
5. Easter
I don't know if all of you celebrate Easter, so I won't write too much here. Easter's the first holiday in this list that I really like, because it's basically just a crap ton of chocolate. Any egg-hunt is fun as hell too, but I haven't done that in a long time because I'm the youngest kid in the family. Basically, my mom had been doing it for like 10 years before I had even been born, so she got completely exhausted of being the "Easter Bunny" pretty quickly in my life.
4. Fourth of July
In fourth place is the Fourth of July. Independence day is great- it's in the middle of summer, you can watch fireworks with whoever you want, and chow down on popsicles and hot dogs. This holiday skyrocketed up my list only after I stopped running the Freedom Run 5K on it every year, and now can sleep in. Another little thing I like about it: picking out a dope red white and blue outfit. It seems dumb, but honestly the concept of the special Fourth of July outfit is so exciting to me.
3. Halloween
Oh my, so many memories. I loved Halloween as a kid, even though I had some pretty lame costumes. One year, I even dressed up as an acorn. My costume was an acorn-shaped cardboard box I wore and a beret. I remember one of my worst Halloweens came when I dressed as the Doctor from Doctor Who. Basically, we wore our costumes to school, except no one understood my costume. Everyone asked me who I was, and little-me was pretty bummed. That is, until a random parent yelled out "Oh, you're the Doctor! That's brilliant!", which made my day. As great as Halloween is, most of us have outgrown it. Luckily though, like a lot of other holidays, Halloween will probably become a lot of fun again once we're in college.
2. Valentine's Day
As a kid, Valentine's Day was just an excuse to eat candy. But now that we're older, takes on a ~new~ meaning. Wink wink. The weird thing about Valentine's Day is it's either like the best holiday of the year or the worst, depending on your relationship status. However, I think being a teenager on Valentine's Day is usually more thrilling than being a teenager on Halloween. Which is why it gets the coveted 2 spot.
1. Columbus Day
Easily my favorite holiday, as it comes with so many festivities. I just love Christopher Columbus so much, and I think everyone at Uni would agree. Every single Columbus day, I inject myself with a large dose of small pox and then go on a trek across the ocean.
Just kidding! My real number 1 is CHRISTMAS! Gifts and candy! Winter break! Lots and lots of shopping! There's so many traditions that I love about Christmas. The movies, the stockings, the breakfast my mom makes. Even just the feeling of Christmas gives me an inexplicable joy, happiness, tranquility. As much I try in this blurb, there is unfortunately no collection of words which can accurately capture the magic of Christmas.
That's my list- if you disagree, vent about it in the comments.
Or as they sometimes call it, 🎃Spooktober🎃.
It's Halloween in less than 3 weeks!
The home stretch of the year is always jam-packed with holidays- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and then New Year's.
As we creep into the "'tis the Season" festivities, I've compiled a list of major holidays, and ranked them accordingly based on how much I enjoy them. If I don't include your favorite holiday, it probably means that either your holiday sucks or my family doesn't personally celebrate it. If it's the latter, then I'm sure it is a wonderful holiday.
8. St. Patrick's Day
Ha-ha! You're not wearing green! *pinch*
That's the full extent of St. Pat's. Weak! For us high schoolers at least. Maybe once when we're in college it'll be fun, if we go to the U of I, that is. Being honest, I forgot this holiday existed at first, until someone told me I should mention it. Easy last place though.
7. Thanksgiving
This may be a hot take, but Thanksgiving is the MOST OVERRATED holiday of all time. "But what about the amazing feast!?" you may screech in indignant fury. Honestly, I don't even like turkey or salads or cranberry sauce. If you know me at all, you'll know that I almost exclusively eat either pizza or burgers and fries. On Thanksgiving, I'm actually eating less food than normal. I like watching Thanksgiving football, but in reality you can watch football any Sunday, or even Saturday if you like NCAAF. Also, I'm one of the sweaty try-hards who voluntarily runs a mile in the freezing cold morning every Thanksgiving. Why? I have no idea. This holiday's only positive is 5 day weekend.
6. New Year's
New Year's is pretty underwhelming unless you're one of three things: an adult trying to get wasted, a third grader who can't wait to stay up past his bedtime, or someone in a quality romantic relationship. Also, you know how everyone sets themselves resolutions, but never follows them past January? I don't think I can even REMEMBER any of mine, except like 5 years ago when I resolved to become really good at League of Legends. Oof.
5. Easter
I don't know if all of you celebrate Easter, so I won't write too much here. Easter's the first holiday in this list that I really like, because it's basically just a crap ton of chocolate. Any egg-hunt is fun as hell too, but I haven't done that in a long time because I'm the youngest kid in the family. Basically, my mom had been doing it for like 10 years before I had even been born, so she got completely exhausted of being the "Easter Bunny" pretty quickly in my life.
4. Fourth of July
In fourth place is the Fourth of July. Independence day is great- it's in the middle of summer, you can watch fireworks with whoever you want, and chow down on popsicles and hot dogs. This holiday skyrocketed up my list only after I stopped running the Freedom Run 5K on it every year, and now can sleep in. Another little thing I like about it: picking out a dope red white and blue outfit. It seems dumb, but honestly the concept of the special Fourth of July outfit is so exciting to me.
3. Halloween
Oh my, so many memories. I loved Halloween as a kid, even though I had some pretty lame costumes. One year, I even dressed up as an acorn. My costume was an acorn-shaped cardboard box I wore and a beret. I remember one of my worst Halloweens came when I dressed as the Doctor from Doctor Who. Basically, we wore our costumes to school, except no one understood my costume. Everyone asked me who I was, and little-me was pretty bummed. That is, until a random parent yelled out "Oh, you're the Doctor! That's brilliant!", which made my day. As great as Halloween is, most of us have outgrown it. Luckily though, like a lot of other holidays, Halloween will probably become a lot of fun again once we're in college.
2. Valentine's Day
As a kid, Valentine's Day was just an excuse to eat candy. But now that we're older, takes on a ~new~ meaning. Wink wink. The weird thing about Valentine's Day is it's either like the best holiday of the year or the worst, depending on your relationship status. However, I think being a teenager on Valentine's Day is usually more thrilling than being a teenager on Halloween. Which is why it gets the coveted 2 spot.
1. Columbus Day
Easily my favorite holiday, as it comes with so many festivities. I just love Christopher Columbus so much, and I think everyone at Uni would agree. Every single Columbus day, I inject myself with a large dose of small pox and then go on a trek across the ocean.
Just kidding! My real number 1 is CHRISTMAS! Gifts and candy! Winter break! Lots and lots of shopping! There's so many traditions that I love about Christmas. The movies, the stockings, the breakfast my mom makes. Even just the feeling of Christmas gives me an inexplicable joy, happiness, tranquility. As much I try in this blurb, there is unfortunately no collection of words which can accurately capture the magic of Christmas.
That's my list- if you disagree, vent about it in the comments.
Gotta disagree with you on Thanksgiving (but that's also bc I think we like different foods, mashed potatoes are one of the greatest things ever and although you can have mashed potatoes any other time of the year, you can gorge on Thanksgiving without judgment), but otherwise 10/10 I agree with this list. It's odd because in Korea, Christmas really isn't that big of a deal, at least not as much as in America (I tried to explain the Christmas hype to my cousins but they just didn't get it), but I'm very glad I picked up on the American love for Christmas. Such a special time of year, and just thinking about it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside...
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome blog post, but, like Abraham, I disagree on Thanksgiving. I usually go to see my cousins in Colorado, so that's always fun, and I work out, hang out with my mom and aunt, make a crap ton of food, and then binge it all with literally no judgement. What's not to like?
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing my opinion on Thanksgiving. My family rarely does anything for Thanksgiving (we might go out to eat, but that's it). Honestly, I have never fully celebrated a holiday. Not even Christmas. In fact, I've had a pretty traumatic experience with Christmas. When I was a kid, I wrote a huge list for Santa just to see it be used as fuel for our fire...
ReplyDeleteDebatable list, but well written. In my opinion, Halloween doesn't even deserve to be a holiday, and Thanksgiving is at least top 5. I'd agree about Columbus Day, I feel like the intelligence at Uni allows it to be one of the only places where we can truly appreciate C.C., our national hero, and small pox and cramped ocean voyages are just two added bonuses. Hopefully next month will bring you around on Thanksgiving though, turkey and stuffing>candy any day.
ReplyDeleteEaster so high? Why is it two spots better than Thanksgiving? You kinda dismissed the 5-day holiday there, but it's so much better than Easter. I've lost all respect for your festive analysis skills.
ReplyDeleteHonestly though, the one-day-off days like Labor Day and Columbus Day are awesome just because of that 3-day weekend. It's so nice to be able to stay up late on Sunday nights.
I don't necessarily entirely with your list but I don't think that's the point. This post is well-written and made me consider what makes my favorite holidays special to me. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI personally disagree a bit with this list. It's not that the holidays you mentioned suck, its that my family just doesn't celebrate most of these holidays. St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentines Day, and 4th of July are all holidays my family sort of ignores. As a result I don't view them as good holidays.
ReplyDeleteI disagreed with a number of these, but most of all with Thanksgiving. The food is unlike anything at any other holiday. At least in my family, Thanksgiving dinner gets more preparation time than any other meal of the year. The rolls, the mashed potatoes, and the roasted vegetables are all good, but the turkey is spectacular. If you don't like turkey, you've probably never had good turkey. I thought it was interesting you decided to say that you're not a "sweaty tryhard" as well, because (not to be rude) you strike me as a major tryhard.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, this was a fun read. It was well written and you had some good humor mixed in as well.