I was thinking yesterday that New Year’s Day is a weird holiday. There’s only the vaguest religiosity left to it, in that it’s a celebration timed to the (Christian) Gregorian calendar. And I gather there were once religious feasts associated with it. But I would bet not 1 in 10,000 Americans finds anything remotely religious about the holiday. And there’s nothing nationalistic about it either. There are no great American events or military victories associated with it, no birthdays of dead American heroes either. It’s essentially a holiday for Americans, Europeans and large swaths of the globe to nurse their hangovers, sleep-in and finish their Christmas vacations on an up-note. Oh, and it’s a time for people to make completely arbitrary promises to themselves about how to live for the next 365 days. I wouldn’t get rid of it or anything. I just think it’s odd.
Correction! Okay, okay: I was …WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrongy-wrong-wrong. This is what you get when your Catholic wife is out of town and you post willy-nilly. See Kathryn’s post above. Or this typical email:
How’s the Catholic mail coming in? New Year’s Day is a Holy Day of obligation for us Catholic. The feast of Mary. Although like many Holy Days of obligation, church attendance is not strong. But since 1 in 4 Americans is Catholic, the 1 in 10,000 is probably a little pessimistic. That also leaves out college football fans. Which gets us to two questions. Did Rudy go to mass yesterday? Did Fred Thompson watch the Tennessee game yesterday?