Well....for one thing, I wouldn't say that these are the six main holidays. I would say that the statutory holidays (New Years, Easter, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day and Christmas) are the major holidays. Mainly because getting time off from school and work is so important to me that they're what I focus on. If I don't get to stay home, it ain't a holiday.

Regarding the big six as defined by avid reader. These are holidays that are big because they have been embraced by companies as big cash cows. Each one of these is a consumer holiday. Examine them individually. Christmas is self-evident. Everybody is expected to purchase a gift for everybody. Decorations are expected to be put up, dinners to be hosted. New Years. Gifts aren't really supposed to be given. But big money is supposed to be spent on New Years Eve, for sure. This is like the restaurant and nightclub holiday or something. Valentine's. Well, clearly, again, gifts are supposed to be purchased, and often restaurants again benefit in a big way. Easter...this one is sort of a tough one. It's a bit too clearly religious to have much purchasing power. But an Easter dinner is always good, and chocolates of course, are something that's been thrown into the mix. Halloween....costumes and candies and decorations. That's what this is all about. And Thanksgiving....well hell. It's not a dinner it's a feast.

So we've established that big bucks are spent at each one of these celebrations. What about the moral aspect? If I remember correctly, several of these holidays go back a long ways. Christmas and Easter obviously go back to the birth and rebirth of Christ. But isn't there evidence that it goes back farther than that? That they are actually old pagan festivals, that Christinity co-opted to make their own? I believe that this is correct. And that Christmas, in fact, wasn't even the correct time of the year for the birth of Christ. But since it coincides with the winter solstice, that's when they made it. And Easter I guess coincides with the beginning of spring. New Years.......well, I assume this has been around for a long time. I don't really know. I mean....well, it must have been around since the beginning of the Julian calendar right? Or is the Gregorian one the older one? Whichever. Um......Valentine's Day. I don't know. Some sort of mating celebration type thing? Many cultures do have fertility rites and stuff like that, around that time of the year. Maybe it was co-opted too. Named after a saint. Halloween I'm pretty sure is a old pagan festival pre-dating Christianity. Thanksgiving is the only clearly new one, being only what...four hundred years old? Something like that.

What do they all have in common? The fact that they are all celebrations. Other statutory holidays, they celebrate things too, some of them, but they celebrate things that are hardly worth celebrating. Victoria Day? Who gives a shit about Victoria? Come on. What else? Labour Day? That's not celebrating anything, it's just a free holiday. And Canada Day? Well...not much to celebrate there. At least that's what most Canadians think, I think. And Remembrance Day, that's not a celebration, it's a wake. So celebratory, all of them. And meaningful, all of them. There's a theory. About currents of thought that have been with humans since the beginning. Like we're talking tens of thousands of years. There's evidence of this, you've all heard about it probably. Similar ideas and structures turning up in what would appear to be totally distinct civilizations with no contact between them. There are numerous examples, from every continent. So this idea about festivals. The need to celebrate these things is hidden deep within the human psyche. The names Christmas and Halloween are simply labels pinned onto subconscious desires and needs, ancient ideas. These festivals are some sort of human throwback to the stone ages or something. Primitive urges expressed through consumerism. It all comes back to consumerism. The driving force behind western society.

but if theyre holidays, such as halloween or valentines, why dont we get a day off like the other official holidays (ie labour day, etc.)?

me

I tried to find information on the reasoning behind Canada's official holidays. Was unable to.

Cal

i was talking to my friend the other day. this relates to bc as being lazy/laid back/relaxed, etc.

she said that many eastern ppl term BC as being lotusland. i was like whaa? thats apparently the term for all the laidbackness (if thats a word). i guess she's right though. i mean, i cant believe that ON doesn't "remember" remembrance day at all (no day off, etc.), whereas most of BC, if not all, declares it a long weekend...

me, yet again.

First of all, I fail to see how declaring Remembrance Day an official holiday makes BC more laid back. If anything, I would think that this makes it less laid back.

Second of all, the term lotusland, implies more than just laidbackness. Laidbackness is definitely a big part of it, I agree. But what else is it? It's the idyllicism that's perceived to be part of the BC lifestyle, the all natural kind of life. BC has traditionally been, and continues to be, a hotbed for utopian communes and stuff like that. Why? Because it's seen as some sort of fabled land or something. Lotus fruit was said to make strangers who ate of it forget their native country, or lose all desire to return to it. This is the kind of response that BC evokes. So I think that your definition of lotusland is a bit too narrow.

And I don't think that being laid-back has anything to do with being lazy.

Cal