The human need to celebrate things is this week’s topic. So many of us go through life jumping from celebration to celebration. We kick off this episode talking about why we have such a need to celebrate things…before asking each other if we look for reasons to celebrate anything and everything.
But let’s slow down a moment and clarify things: what constitutes a celebration? Does it have to be a recurring, formal thing…or can celebrations be a small thing appreciated in a moment? From there, we move on to discussing the strangest things we’ve celebrated.
It seems there’s some new celebration almost every week: Pi day, Pancake Day, and so many others. We devote some time to acknowledging social media’s role in a myriad celebrations people mention online. (For example, today is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, meaning this!) More than social media, though, celebrations are big business. We spend some time discussing how money factors into so many celebrations.
Humans love having reasons to celebrate the things they do: we spend a little time talking about things we do to celebrate accomplishments like finishing another novel or ending big projects at work (Christopher spent part of last weekend after a big project playing this in celebration of wrapping up a big thing at his job). Even though we have celebrated some strange things, there are some celebrations we just do not get…and we discuss them for a few minutes.
Even death has become a celebratory thing in its own way, with many swapping out “funeral” for “celebration of life.” But is that just a fancy way of saying funeral…or are people really celebrating after one is gone for good?
If you listen regularly, you know we don’t stay maudlin too long — we jump from talking about death to…weird celebrations like this one. After discussing some of the stranger celebrations we know about, we move on to discussing how celebrations differ in other countries; i.e. is St. Patrick’s Day the rowdy plastic green fest in Ireland as it is in America?
Finally, we close out the episode by talking about our favorite celebrations.
We’d love to hear what you think about celebrations in the comments…so have at it!
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Nice episode. Somehow at the end when you were talking about the Scandinavian Gronlunds, I had a flash of when your dad and I scored Chekarin – The Peeker – that you now have in your office, I think. Little shop in Andersonville, and your dad really wanted one of those carvings but they were too expensive. The shop keeper took pity on us, I think, and said that since the one you have had a tiny chip in it somewhere, he could sell it for a ridiculous discount, and we jumped on it. We took it to show Mormor and she’s the one who named him. Yeah. We celebrated that score, big time.
Mary/Mom: Yep, there’s a very small and almost invisible bit missing from one of the troll’s feet. I love that little things like getting something cool when you’re younger is such a cool feeling. I chatted with a friend at work yesterday about antiques and thought about how cool it felt when Cynthia and I bought the cool cabinet we have in our dining room. I love that the cabinet holds Martini glasses and other things used for celebrating things.
If you want to see real party animals, check out the Muharram Ashura flagellation and Philippines crucifixion videos on youtube. Not for the squeamish. :/
The Passion just brings out the crazy in all sorts of people, eh?
CMS: I’ve seen some of those…gruesome!