HEY~It's MEMORIAL Day: Our Day of Barbecue and Mattresses.

An Explanation of American Holidays

Well, well, well! Here we are at ‘Memorial Day’, another American holiday that purports to be about one thing but winds up being about something else entirely. In this case, honoring the fallen fighters of foreign wars by having a barbecue.

The reason no one finds that befuddling is because the collision of several disparate, colliding concepts is a holiday idea that Americans no longer question. It has occurred to everyone at some point that Easter baskets filled with candy delivered by a bunny and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are a study in cognitive dissonance. But perhaps it is cognitive dissonance that holds the best American holidays together.

For proprietary purposes, I googled “How to celebrate Memorial Day” and the most practical suggestion I saw was “Don't wish anyone a “HAPPY Memorial Day.” On this somber occasion of grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, ‘HAPPY’ sends the wrong message. Speaking as a vegan, I am a better fit for this particular version of apophenia than most. ( Yes, I said apophenia. And it just so happens I spent a lot of time trying to find the correct word for this, so don’t go giving me none of your back-talk. It means ‘creating a meaningful correlation between unrelated things’ which I’m sure you knew already. Sadly, it’s too many letters for wordle.)

According to Wikipedia, the word holiday comes from the Old English word hāligdæg which meant holy days and referred only to special religious days. Some cultures still design their holidays to honor spiritual visions or heroic events. But in our culture, the celebration usually involves an elaborate specific menu plan, followed by a sports event or a nap. Maybe that explains how, little by little, MATTRESS SALES found their way into the beating heart and soul of most of our holidays.

In case you doubt me, I woke up this morning to this bulletin from The New York Times’ Wirecutter page

I was once discussing these puzzling holiday underpinnings with the comedian Elayne Boosler, and we decided that all American holidays fall into one of three categories.

1. The Barbecue holidays: (Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July )

2. The Roasting holidays: (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter.)

3. The Mattress holidays: (Memorial day, Labor Day, 4th of July, President’s day, New Year’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Martin Luther King Day.)

As you may have noticed, four of the MOST IMPORTANT holidays hold a position in more than one category. These are The DOUBLE holidays, of which MEMORIAL DAY is one.

4. THE DOUBLE holidays: (Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July, Veteran’s Day.)

   President’s Day is a mattress-only holiday because it has yet to inspire anyone to barbecue or roast. An interesting way to celebrate the day would have been to pick a president and then, depending on who was being honored that year, design a dinner around his favorite meal. Although maybe it worked out for the best since William Henry Harrison’s favorite food was squirrel stew, which would have broken my heart. On a different discordent note, George Washington’s ‘Hoe cakes’, and Andrew Jackson’s ‘Tenderloin with Jezebel sauce’ would have created so many memes they would definitely have broken the internet.

Meanwhile, the way it eventually worked out is that almost all of our MOST IMPORTANT holidays have at least SOME connection to mattress sales. To prove my point, I have created this helpful mattress sale compilation. Even Earth Day has a mattress sale.

Even Martin Luther King Day has mattress sales!

Though I can imagine the advertising agency meetings that took place where the head of sales said “Wair!…Hear me out. What is he best known for? ‘I HAD A DREAM.” And what does every serious dreamer need?? A MATTRESS!”

When you consider the omnipresence of the mattress as a mostly unacknowledged holiday signifier, it is surprising that there is no official day reserved as Mattress Day. It would definitely have worked since the idea makes as solid an American spiritual statement as many of the other holidays. PLUS it connects easily to a celebratory menu (Breakfast in Bed!)

But back to Memorial Day. To conclude our discussion, let us look briefly at the spiritual significance of the food choices offered at the barbecues held on The Double holidays such as Memorial Day.

Most barbecues traditionally feature an assortment of badly burned edibles, ranging from charred chicken or blistered hot dogs to scorched blackened vegetables like corn. A perusal of on-line barbecue photographs points us directly to which barbecue food is, in fact, the most sacred: There appears to be a transcendent and even a spiritual element to consumption of The Barbecued Hamburger. Observe, if you will, the intensity of the love that these celebrants bring to the experience. I used the word “spiritual” because I was intrigued by the way that the internet hamburger consumers below appear to be actually making out with their burgers.

In almost every case, the facial expressions suggest a bigger than life almost erotic moment. And although that is certainly not the way Memorial Day was designed to play out, if there is one thing to be said about American holiday celebrations, they generally go wherever the hell they want .

In the next group of photos, the visibility of tongues suggests that these celebrants are experiencing some sort of transcendent alteration in consciousness, placing the hamburger into the class of hallucinatory substances known as entheogens that are employed in shamanic or religious rites . What other explanation can there be for the trance like state of these women (except the ingestion of entheogens as part of the pre-barbecue prep.)

And with that, may I wish you all NOT a happy Memorial Day. If you are so moved, consider going out and at least pricing a mattress. If not, then perhaps just focus on having a lack of battles at your barbecue where you and your family will make sweet love to some kind of grilled food.

Be guided by the smile on this Mattress Dad’s face as you and your family set out to have a (your adjective here) Memorial Day

*PS: And be grateful that this year the birthday of the current president has not yet become an official holiday. Even though it apparently is going to host the occasion of a one hundred million dollar military parade to which we, the people who are still on the hook for having to pay actual taxes, all contributed our salaries. The menu for that holiday, should it make it onto the calendar, would of course be MacDonald’s burgers augmented with a few of the current president’s favorite word: ‘groceries.’ Then followed by a big beautiful golf match and the biggest most beautiful mattress sale that *anyone has ever seen. Everyone will be saying they have never seen anything like it.

**PS.#2. It was immediately pointed out to me by Kathy Notaro that I am so solipsistic that I forgot how important BEER is to the celebration of EVERY American holiday.

It’s too late for me to really incorporate this salient point into my salute since the post already went out. But to those of you who are seeing this anyway, I think a fitting way to add it is this video I made for HEARTY DRINKING MEN: a song by my husband, Mr. Andy Prieboy that definitively captures the mood of adding at least some inebriation to the celebration of any and every holiday.