Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Happy Famiversary! How do you Celebrate Family Day?
Yesterday was Family Day in some parts of Canada. It’s the latest holiday sensation sweeping the great white north.
Alberta started the craze in 1990, and this year Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan joined up with varying degrees of success. Some people got the day off, others didn’t, and Manitoba called its holiday Louis Riel Day. (Manitoba always has to ruin the fun for everyone.)
A Saskatchewan news release explains, “Regular public holidays enhance peopleâ€™s ability to create better work-family balance.”
But the popular consensus in Canada says February is just a really boring month, everybody likes a holiday, and politicians love declaring them.
America has been celebrating Family Day since 2001 on paper.
It’s the fourth Monday in September, by presidential proclamation, at the urging of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).
George W. Bush stated, “I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day by spending quality time with family members and engaging in other wholesome activities that help unite and strengthen the bonds between parents and children.”
Specifically, CASA bills the holiday as “a day to eat dinner with your children.” Wow, that’s setting the bar high.
Wikipedia indicates Australia and South America celebrated Family Day for the first time last year. Clearly, the holiday is set to take the world by storm.
So… I have questions.
How does, or how should, Family Day differ from Thanksgiving? Obviously gourds and pumpkins are out because Family Day isn’t a harvest holiday.
But what else? No big family meal? Spend the day with immediate family, nixing a family reunion? Finger football instead of TV football?
How did you, or would you, spend Family Day?
I ask the question seriously because I’ve often thought of inaugurating an end-of-year family day. It would be a day with its own quirky traditions specific to our family, but because it would follow so closely behind Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seemed a little redundant. Maybe February is the answer.
I like the name ‘Famiversary.’ Yes, it’s a little goofy, but like an anniversary, you’d be commemorating a date, in this case one that symbolically marks the starting of your family. It could be the date you learned you were pregnant for the first time, or the date adoption records were finalized, or maybe it’s the day you already schedule an annual family reunion.
If Family Day or Famiversary was a national holiday where you live — or your family simply decided to take that day off — how would you use that day? Recreate Thanksgiving? Do something new?