I was never really a big fan of summer holidays like Memorial Day and the 4th of July. Its not that I am anti-patriotic, I'm all for people abusing the flag to sell used cars and all sorts of merchandise, but the whole aesthetic of these holidays is all wrong. They just can't capture your imagination as well as the winter holidays.

Lets compare Halloween, Christmas (Chanukwanzaa?) and New Years, the winter holidays, to Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day, the Summer holidays.

Food:On Halloween, we get to build up our standard winter blubber coats by ingesting what can only be described as a toxic amount of sugary candy. If you aren't diabetic, you're going to be. Then of course, there is the inevitable turkey, which if nothing else, serves as a sleep aid.

Summer holidays provide us with what? Barbecue? Okay, so there's nothing too wrong with that, but candy is better. Sorry folks. Besides, if your family is like mine, "barbecue," doesn't mean T-Bone steaks and hamburgers, it means "cornish hens" (midget chickens) and "turkey burgers." Gee... thanks grandpa... Additionally, you have to eat it outside, often with paper plates, and paper napkins which always fight a losing battle over the power of barbecue sauce (which gets all over you from drippage, and from slapping yourself to kill disease-bearing mosquitoes).

History:We've been doing New Years forever, I mean, thousands of years of drunken mid-winter debauchery and cliched countdowns. Hell, even Dick Clark is older than the 4th of July. Christmas has taken a little longer to turn into the pagan currency-worshipping holiday that it has become, but nonetheless, its got some history to it. Of course there is Halloween, which is based on a combination of devil worship and people who were scared of devil worship, and it's been around for centuries.

Summer holidays don't have as much history. I mean, you have to give the 4th a shout out for the whole independence deal, and Memorial Day is a great excuse to give an old-fashioned dawg-pound to your favorite veteran. However, in terms of sheer age, the summer holidays are the New Kids on The Block, and you know where that leads... summer is turning into a veritable Marky-Mark and his Funky Bunch.

Traditions:Okay, so the 4th of July isn't too bad here, I mean, its not going to beat any winter holiday, but it comes close to beating Halloween. Blowing stuff up has always been cool, and any holiday that encourages this, becomes a great one in terms of tradition. Memorial Day and Labor Day however have traditions that revolve around really ugly old people going to the beach. These traditions fail to hold a candle.

Winter traditions are wonderful though. Halloween has its costumes and candy, for a male of the species, it serves as an opportunity to witness one of the most curious phenomena in the history of humanity. Women, on Halloween, almost always dress slutty. They don't go out as a witch, they go as a witch with cavernous cleavage and a skirt the size of my belt. Christmas is also great, it has family (and alcohol to help deal with them), it has presents, it has an opportunity to lie to little kids. Some people even go to church (when did Christmas become a holiday about religion?). Of course, New Year's has that Dick Clark-inspired "rockin'" party that ensures that all are too drunk to remember what they did, and too hung-over to ever complete their resolutions.

So, as you can see, Summer holidays are vastly inferior to the Winter holidays. Now of course, the Spring holidays aren't bad though, St. Patrick's Day, and Cinco de Mayo, regardless of their non-American-ness, are perhaps two of the most disastrous holidays for one's liver, and the best for one's good time. Guinness and Corona...

More to come, perhaps.

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