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All the Holidays

 



They’re not on any calendars. You won’t find a rite for them in any religious prayer book. They don’t come with a day off work or media coverage. 

They are holidays nonetheless.

The day a premature infant finally comes home from the hospital. The day you signed to purchase your first home. The date when an adoption was finalized, a dissertation was successfully defended, a loved one came home, safe, from military duty.

If you remember it, if you celebrate it - - it’s a holiday.

Sometimes it is a day you honor but cannot celebrate, such as the loss of someone you love. The last time you gathered together in a special place. The end of a relationship that really needed to end.

Those days weigh heavily but they mean something you cannot shake. Maybe you wouldn’t want to. 

Sometimes these are times of light-hearted bonding among friends or family. At my house that would be Tiger Birthday. (June 1st.)

Of course the word holiday comes from a strictly religious context in which such days were inherently “holy.” I just looked up the definition of holiness and I’m not going to wrestle with theologians. But I am going to say that the days we choose to set apart from all other days say a lot about who we are and what we value. 

In one way or another, chosen holidays are:

  • living out how we care
  • who and what we value
  • what is meaningful
  • what we believe should continue

This post was inspired by a friend who recently mentioned her family’s particular devotion to one particular date on the calendar. One way or another, each year her family found away to observe this day and the memory accompanying it. I would go to the mat and wrestle any theologian over the holiness of this day: the anniversary of her ringing the bell at the conclusion of her cancer treatment. 

Whatever holidays you celebrate, and no matter when you observe them, may they be holy in that way: living manifestations of love, meaning, and the essential values that make us human.


Village Green/Town² Comments 

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  1. Julia A. McCreadyDecember 25, 2025 at 5:16 AM

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