NEW RULE

holidays must be on set schedules.

i just found out that chanukkah starts december 4. i had no idea. but in order to do my civic jewty, i figure it'd be a good idea to know. problem is, the damn thing falls at a different time each year. dumb.

we've been on a daily calendar as a global society for centuries, millenia if you're a card carrying member of the jew crew, and still we haven't managed to peg our holidays to specific times. i screwed up my flight home for thanksgiving because i looked at the wrong date on the calendar and booked accordingly. had thanksgiving been slated to fall regularly on, say, november 24th rather than the "4th thursday in november," i'd have been fine.

sometimes hannukkah overlaps christmas, sometimes it nearly devours thanksgiving, and sometimes it just bridges november and december. it's really confusing. thankfully, the holiday has all the significance of halloween, otherwise it'd be a big deal.

still, even though i made fun of christians for backtracking on their decision to have christmas on december 25th, at least they made the right move in making sure everyone would know exactly when the holiday was. and they advertised the hell out of it.

hannukah has been advertised in true jewish fashion: half-assed and on the cheap. maybe if we'd put half as much effort into promoting our "holiday" as the christians do, we'd have more than 15 million subscribers worldwide. of course, we'd somehow have to hide the fact that for all our holidays, save two, we have to give something up. how's that celebrating? dumb.

as annoying as it is, the hype leading up to christmas each year is, at the very least, impressive. christians have even gotten the newspeople into the mix. "there are only 18 shopping days left till christmas." maybe we should do that too. "you only have 2 weeks to get presents for all 8 nights!" surely, this newfound approach to consumerism would boost awareness, but it'd also boost sales and profitability at stores, many of which "we" own. and hell, it's not like the jew bigwigs have much else to do at the moment other than to hype up our mini holiday. after all, the writers are on strike, so all of "our" shows are on indefinite hiatus.

maybe come the day after thanksgiving (which shall from this point forward be referred to as "november 26th") every newscast should be led by a holiday updates. can you imagine, "there are only 87 days till sukkot, so get your hamentachen ready. also, don't forget about groundhog's day, which is only 41 days away!" hey, they're not important, but at least you'll know when they are.