Okay, her premise doesn’t reflect any reality I’m familiar with.
And while what he’s saying sounds suitably depressing, I’m not really sure how it relates to what she’s saying in any constructive way.
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Comics I Don't Understand 
Most celebrating is done on New Year’s Eve, not New Years Day so, yes, it is a different day. Most New Years days are probably spent recovering from a depressing hangover.
His birthday depresses him (standard advancing age joke?) so all the other days are better, or more festive in his words. I guess he is equating his birthday to a depressing hangover…
Most of the celebrations are on New Years Eve, not day. The day, itself, is for sleeping it off and recovering from the hangover.
He’s pointing out that there’s another celebration (his birthday) that’s not as much fun as other days.
It’s over 10 minutes difference in the timestamp, but John K’s comment wasn’t there when I posted mine.
Geez…. I read that as “Everybody does the bulk of their celebrating in a different way” and I was going off on tangents about how every one is depressed that they think everyone else is having more fun and how you always get stuck hanging out with people who think it’d be sooo much nicer to stay home when you’d really go out but if you go out it always….
Well…. anyway…. on rereading it says “celebrating on a different day” which makes perfect sense this time around. New Years is Jan. 1 but we celebrate it on Dec. 31. Is this the only such holiday? He jokes his birthday is similar.
As a kid, we opened presents on the evening of Christmas Eve, and as a kid I was All About the presents, so for me and others in my situation Christmas was mostly “celebrated” on the 24th rather than the 25th.
We used to go caroling on Christmas Eve. It was a *big* deal. Not as big as opening presents and stockings but second to that.
Also technically we don’t observe Veterans Day on Veterans Day usually.
“Also technically we don’t observe Veterans Day on Veterans Day usually.”
Tell that to the appliance stores and car lots.
Also, there ARE observations of veterans day. They are (appropriately) smaller than Memorial Day observations, but they certainly exist.
The Boy Scouts still put flags on all the gravesites, and, in my previous home state, the Air National Guard does a flyover in missing-man formation over the veteran’s cemetaries.
OK, I assume she meant it the way John and Arthur read it, but Bill read it the same way I did – ‘every person celebrates NY on a different day from every other person’, which, while obvious nonsense would also be the usual meaning of that phrasing.
” New Years is Jan. 1 but we celebrate it on Dec. 31. Is this the only such holiday?”
There’s a small but non-zero list of holidays that are celebrated on the first Monday after, and then there’s Washington and his amazing mobile birthday.
“There’s a small but non-zero list of holidays that are celebrated on the first Monday after, ”
….. um…. like Veteran’s day?
‘‘every person celebrates NY on a different day from every other person’”
Oh…. that *is* a very grammatically correct way to parse the sentence! It makes utterly no sense but grammatically it is probably more correct than the way John and Arthur and the cartoonist meant it.
I suppose the correct way to say it should have but “New Years is unique in that the bulk of its celebration is on a different day”. No need to bring in the hypothetical “everybody” who are not the subject.
Not much celebrating on All Hallows’ Day either.
I wonder why they never made Christmas and New Year’s Day conform to the Monday Holiday Law.
I would say that the celebration itself is mostly on New Year’s Day. Early on the day, but on the day. There’s some significant per-celebration of course.
“….. um…. like Veteran’s day?”
No. Veteran’s Day is November 11. Memorial Day is always a Monday, but Veterans Day isn’t.
“No. Veteran’s Day is November 11. Memorial Day is always a Monday, but Veterans Day isn’t.”
??????????
But… we observe it on Monday…
MiB:
While not all secular holidays are on the Monday holiday bill, I won’t accept that Christmas is a secular holiday until it’s made a Monday holiday.
I’ll admit that New Year’s Day is hard to move. Independence day might have been easy if most people didn’t call it “4th of July”.
There is a deep-seated German superstition that forbids celebrating a birthday in advance of the actual date. This produces the odd custom of “celebrating into the occasion”, typically when the birthday falls on a Sunday, but sometimes on other weekdays, too. Just like New Year’s, the guests are all invited and gather on the evening before the birthday, but nobody says “Happy Birthday” until the big moment arrives at midnight.
There was one year when we had to flout this custom. I specified on the invitations that since it was an American’s birthday, it did not fall under the German superstitional rules. It didn’t help. Even though the guests all understood the logistical reasons why we had to move the party forward, it was surprising to see how much trouble they had with the “illegitimate” celebration.
And here’s a vaguely relevant comic I liked from late September:
“But… we observe it on Monday…”
Correct. November 11 will be a Monday this year.
Veteran’s Day used to be one of those holidays that always moved to Monday. A few years ago, it was moved back to November 11, I guess to remember the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and all that. In 2018, November 11th was on a Sunday, so Veterans Day was celebrated on the Monday so banks and federal employees could get their holiday.
” Veterans Day was celebrated on the Monday”
The events at the cemetaries were on Sunday. The mail carriers and bankers took the day off Monday.
I guess whether or not Veterans day was “celebrated” on the 11th or 12th depends on your definition of “celebrated”.
Veterans day is on Nov. 11th but it is observed (not celebrated) by lack of mail service and days off on Monday. So it is definitely a holiday in which the bulk of observation is on a different day.
And I tend to agree with Brian of STL that the “bulk of celebrating New Years” is shouting “Happy New Years” and making noise and fireworks and what have you does happen after midnight on New Years Day. Now I suppose one can argue “2a.m. Saturday night” usually means late into the night that began on Saturday and into the following day.
But I’d say that is incorrect and that there is no 2a.m Saturday night. It’s 2a.m. Sunday morning.
” there is no 2a.m Saturday night. It’s 2a.m. Sunday morning.”
How about the one 24 hours previous? (You know, for people who argue that “morning” starts at dawn or thereabouts.)
New Year’s Eve, like Christmas Eve and All Saints’ Eve, makes more sense if you assume the old practice of considering that one day ends at sunset, and the new one begins immediately following sunset. This puts the New Year’s “celebrations” on the night of New Years’ day, and the celebrations of Christmas Eve on the night of Christmas day, and the “celebrations” of All Saints’ Eve” on the night of All Saints’ Day.
“that is incorrect and that there is no 2a.m Saturday night. It’s 2a.m. Sunday morning”
woozy, there’s nothing incorrect about “2am Saturday night,” because that’s how people actually speak. If I take my leave of you at 12:15am and say “Good night,” will you really correct me?
If you say, “2am, December 31st”, people aren’t like to think you mean a couple hours after midnight.
‘If you say, “2am, December 31st”, people aren’t like to think you mean a couple hours after midnight.’
2 a.m. is *always* a couple of hours after midnight. The only question is which midnight?
To me, “2am, December 31st” is 22 hours before the new year.
OTOH, *in conversation*, “2am Saturday night” can mean the same as “2am Sunday morning”.
No, but I’d find “So at 2 A.M. Saturday night we were….” to be ambiguous and I’d be hard pressed to feel any confidence in what you actually mean. I’d *have* to ask. But if I didn’t or couldn’t ask I’d have to assume you meant that it was 5 hours after 9 PM Friday, and 6 hours before 8AM Saturday. Even if it’s more likely you meant Sunday 2AM and just *can’t* reconcile a sentence that has a day name and a time indication in the incorrect way.
Any rate. The hollering and ball dropping and hoo-fer-rah…. *does* actually occur on January 1. And even though it is an intense 10 minutes, as opposed to the hours of drinking and socializing and partying before hand, those 10 minutes *are* the “bulk” of celebrating, I’d say.
Maybe we should have the date change at noon. It’d make things a lot easier because it would be so hard and difficult and awkward that no-body would ever get it wrong.
@ woozy – There’s a village in Spain that does that. It’s been reported in the German news for the last few years. Apparently the majority of residents are retirees, and they prefer to be in bed long before midnight, so they simply moved their celebrations 12 hours earlier.
“Maybe we should have the date change at noon. It’d make things a lot easier”
All the other days, though, would be much, much harder.
Every business would have office hours like 9:00-12:00 today, 12:00-5:00 tomorrow. And everybody’s now on a six-day workweek.
9-12 Monday.
12-5 and 9-12 Tuesday
12-5 and 9-12 Wednesday
12-5 and 9-12 Thursday
12-5 and 9-12 Friday
12-5 Saturday.
“Veterans day is on Nov. 11th but it is observed (not celebrated) by lack of mail service and days off on Monday.”
No! Veterans Day is not one of the “Monday holidays”. Assuming we are talking about the US Federal Holiday, the day off work for federal employees, postal workers, and others who follow the federal holiday schedule is November 11, unless the 11th occurs on the weekend. If the 11th is Saturday, offices close on Friday; if the 11th is Sunday, offices close on Monday. Otherwise, offices close on the 11th, whatever day of the week that is. Next year, for example, federal offices will be closed Wednesday, November 11. Not Monday.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day
or https://usafederalholidays.com
>@ woozy – There’s a village in Spain that does that. It…..so they simply moved their celebrations 12 hours earlier.
I was (tongue in cheek) talking about *everyday*. Tuesday May 27th, will begin at noon, go on through the afternoon and then evening then you go to bed Tuesday night and sleep through the night and wake up *TUESDAY* Morning on May 27th, eat breakfast and go to work, and then at noon, it becomes Wednesday May 38th.
*Everyone* is awake and alert and doing things when the day switches mid routine utterly arbitrary.
>All the other days, though, would be much, much harder.
It’s *because* it is harder that will make this easier. I wasn’t doing this for New Years Eve. I was doing this for Saturday nights. There’d be no ambiguity with “we were still carousing for bars at 3 am Saturday night”. Well, you might claim but then there’d be ambiguity with “I worked so late Monday morning I didn’t get to lunch until 3 p.m.” Except in the system It’s very clear and common that that would mean 3p.m. Tuesday. In this system, it simply would not occur to people that Monday will continue on just because you haven’t stopped doing what you were doing in the morning. Days *always* change in the middle of activity and that wouldn’t *be* a cause for remaining in the same day.
And you’d have the advantage of saying “I worked on through the next day” which gives more emphasis.
On the other hand you do have to work *during* six days. I hadn’t consdered that. But you get Monday Evenings (previously Sunday evenings) off. You have to work Saturday Evenings (previously Friday). But at least this way the weekends truly *do* start on Saturday and end on Monday.
Of course, looking for the heart of Saturday night will occur on Sunday night which is just wrong. We could go the other way. You quit work Friday afternoon and then sleep in Friday morning. Then you have a full day of fun Saturday: Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Saturday morning. Then Suddenly it’s Sunday afternoon. Then Sunday morning you…. have to go to work.
“you … wake up *TUESDAY* Morning on May 27th, eat breakfast and go to work, and then at noon, it becomes Wednesday May 38th.”
This led to crowds of people on the streets demanding, ‘Give us back our 11 days!‘
:)
” Then Sunday morning you…. have to go to work.”
Except for the people who refuse to work on Sunday, of course, because God said so.
AND it screws up Monday Night Football, which offends another crowd.
“Except for the people who refuse to work on Sunday, of course, because God said so.”
Well, the partiers who want to carouse all Saturday night will have to fight with the folks who want to go to church Sunday morning. I was giving them the partiers a nice out.
Still What’s wrong with hitting the bars Sunday night when you don’t have to go to work that next morning?
>AND it screws up Monday Night Football, which offends another crowd.
Not if you work Sunday morning and Monday afternoon. Come home and watch Monday night football and then the next Monday morning you get to engage in some Monday morning quarterbacking.
Except that Monday Night Football is now on Tuesdays, sure.
Other comics writers also feel the celebrations are over by midnight:
I always email my friends in Australia to ascertain that the next year DID arrive; then I can go to sleep . . .
“Other comics writers also feel the celebrations are over by midnight:”
For the very old and the very young, sure.
Considering that every moment of every day is literally the end of the previous (insert arbitrary period), and the start of the succeeding (insert arbitrary period). You can decide that the new day begins at midnight, or noon, or 8:53:37 PM, or whenever and it makes absolutely no difference, except as it relates to the affairs of other people and the agreement or lack thereof with their expectations. The same is true for years, decades, miillennia, eons, or whatever. Months ALREADY have no real relation to the actual orbital period of the moon.
@James Pollack: “Except that Monday Night Football is now on Tuesdays, sure.”
And, as Churchy La Femme will remind us. Friday the 13th falls on a Sunday afternoon this month.
“Except that Monday Night Football is now on Tuesdays, sure”
No it’s not. You work Sunday morning. Then it becomes Monday afternoon. You watch football Monday night *on Monday*. Go to bed. Wake up Monday morning and talk about the game on Monday morning.
This works if you don’t like church.
Sunday football will have to be in the afternoon though. If you have it Sunday morning there’s only a few hours until Monday night.
Sunday Night Football is now on Mondays, and Monday Night Football is now on Tuesday, and Thursday Night Football is now on Fridays.
“Sunday football will have to be in the afternoon though.”
Depends on where you are in the country. On the east coast, games start at 1pm, but those exact same games are on at 10am on the West Coast. So, all of a sudden, the DAY OF THE GAME depends on where you happen to be standing.
Veteran’s Day had been made a Monday holiday – by the Federal government. Not all states followed same, due to it being a specific date holiday (July 4th – specific date, Memorial Day – hot a specific date). As a result for a few years here in NYS we had 2 Veteran’s Day holidays . This was resolved by Veteran’s Day being returned to its original date of Nov 11. As a general, but not always, rule – if a holiday is tied to a specific date it remained on same when the change was made to Monday holidays.
What we call Presidents’ Day is still legally named George Washington’s Birthday. By the way do you know what date GW was born? Think carefully – he was not born on Feb 22, 1732 as is generally shown as his birth date. It was Feb 11, 1731. Why the difference? He was born on Feb 11, 1731 o.s. (old style). When the English adjusted to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, his birthday was retroactively changed to the new calendar, hence Feb 22, 1732. Some people did not change their birth dates and continued to use the old date with the “o.s.” after it.
I thought Monday night football is now on Thursdays as CBS takes the TV shows it plans to show on Thursday and moves them to Monday for the start of the season while Thursday night it shows football games.
Days do start, according to the bible at sundown the night before the day. It is in the first 5 lines of Genesis. The earth when formed is dark and God says let there be light. He sees the light as good. “And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.” So the evening/night is part of the following day. This is why Jewish holidays start the night before the day of the holiday.
I thought Monday night football is now on Thursdays
No, that’s a different game. The Thursday slot rights were won by Fox starting this year. Monday Night Football has been on ESPN for a long time.
@ Brian – Times change, as do lucrative TV contracts. I still associate Monday Night Football with ABC, but unfortunately also with Howard Cosell. The only Thursday game I was ever interested in watching was the one on Thanksgiving, but I don’t think I would want to binge-watch three of them in succession.
Meryl: As I’m sure has already been done, I’m going to quibble and say that the time from “Let there be light!” through the evening, and then up to the morning constitute the first day — so a day should start at dawn. It lists these things: light, evening, (implied darkness of night), and morning, and then says “the first day”, ie: these are the components of the first day.
Obviously my faction lost that argument, but they are still wrong ;-)
Wow, way to shoot myself in the foot: “they” who are wrong are the OTHER faction, not mine…
I don’t remember where I ran into this, but I really like the theory that the semitic custom of starting (and ending) the day at sunset (instead of the modern midnight or the older sunrise customs) was simply that from the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, sunset was a much more reliable (and uniform) marker.
Brian in STL – Thank you.
larK – Well, that leaves the afternoon unclaimed for any day! :-) This is what I was told by two different Hebrew schools.