Calendar Discrimination

Every day each of us, no matter our race, gender, or station in life, faces discrimination in some form. Much of it is subtle, much is systematic. We strive as individuals, communities, businesses, and nations to eradicate inequality wherever we may find it; to root it out and stab it in the neck with the pitchfork of equality until its terrified squeeks die away, then toss it on the burn pile with last night's garbage and have a beer while we watch the flames.

But today, I would like to shed light upon a discrimination that is quite overlooked, at least as far as Google and I can tell: "holiday discrimination." (the term only gets about 25 hits on Google, whereas "racial discrimination" gets 780,000, "age discrimination" 420,000, and "sexual discrimination" about 130,000.)

As I was perusing my calendar recently to see when Easter was, I noticed that Daylight Savings Time started on the same day, which I thought was kind of convenient, at least for my stoned ass. So, when I woke up today, I thought I had missed resetting my alarm and was an hour late getting on the road, which naturally pissed me off a little bit.

After freaking out for 10 minutes wondering why my computer and my satellite hadn't reset themselves like they normally do (which, frankly, is how I usually find out about Daylight Savings), I stomped up to the calendar, demanding to know what was going on...and that's when I noticed the italicized text below "Daylight Savings Begins" that read "U.K. only." Oh. And I suppose that's why it was italicized, huh? So I could fucking see it? Why the hell is the UK Daylight Savings Time on my fucking calendar?

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to know that Argentina's Holy Thursday is the 24th of March, the 26th of May is Corpus Christi in Germany, Liberation Day for Italy is April 25th, or Malaysia's Federal Territory Day is the 1st of February. But really, do we need these thing cluttering up our calendars?

I'm not saying that a few other holidays aren't a good thing, but really, I think in the interest of efficiency, we should make an effort to make calendars for specific people. We're just globalizing for no fucking reason. If I have to have Canadian and Mexican holidays on my calendar, I can deal with that, they're at least on the same continent as us, you can expect a little bit of globalization, but Argentina? Malaysia? Are we only including them because they make our crappy products for pennies on the dollar and the least we can do for them is include their holidays in the calendars they make? I'm sure that warms all the hearts of the underpaid and overworked 10-year-olds in the factories.

Why do we include the UK, anyway? Because they speak fucking English? Do they care about our holidays? No, they understand that you should mind your own goddamned business (I don't judge the rest of the UK by Tony Blair, obviously). The UK is across the ocean, for God's sake! I'm sure they don't care about holidays they don't get off work from any more than I do. Its not that I don't like the UK, I think they're great blokes (ha ha), but I don't need that sort of confusion in my life, you know?

Besides, if you're going to include some people, you should include them all. You can't just go around including Malaysia, Japan, China, Germany, Italy, France, the UK, Canada, Mexico, etc. You have to include Moldova's Day of the Republic on September 2nd & Caricom Day, July 1st in Guyana? And what about Native American holidays? Its bad enough that we stole their land, we can't even include them in our calendars when we're including everyone else?

So let's remember what we learned in kindergarten: if you don't bring enough for everyone, don't bring any at all.