The Disappearing Month

You hear it all the time these days. Everywhere people are saying that they're cutting back. They're economizing. They're downsizing. We have to save every resource and make it last for just a while longer than we used to. We have to cut extras out of our lives and live more frugally. And just in case you have troubles doing that on your own, the government will help you. They will tell you where to cut back. They will tell you which natural resources you have to save, even if it means returning to the dark ages. If this health care bill passes, they will tell you which diseases are worth treating, which people are deserving of treatment, and which people we ought to let die for the good of the masses.
I think I've figured out the next place that the government is going to tell us to cut back. I've been studying this for a while, and in my professional opinion, I think that the government is going to downsize the calendar. I think we will soon hear of a bill proposing that we remove one month from the twelve we usually use in a year.
It makes perfect sense when you think about it. That's one less month that they have to send out welfare checks, social security, or make medicare, medicaid or WIC payments. That's one less month that government officials have to pay salaries to government employees. One less month they have to use in factoring vacation time and sick leave.
It would be good for us too. Just think, a thirty year mortgage (providing you're one of the few people that qualifies for one these days) would actually be paid off in twenty-seven and a half years. On a more personal front, for females that's one less month of--you know--per year. And who wouldn't be happy with that?
The only question really is, which month do we do away with? It can't be January. We need that for new year's resolutions. Plus, Martin Luther King Jr's birthday is celebrated then. We don't want to be accused of being politically incorrect. For the same reason we can't get rid of March. St. Patrick's Day. All of Chicago would be in a uproar because then they'd have no reason to dye the river green. We can't do February because that would put cupids out of work. And the card companies. We have to keep April because without Easter we'd have no reason to get dressed up in new dresses and we'd have no reason to eat tons of candy. May has to stay because of Mother's Day. And no one wants to get rid of summer months. We need September because that's when school starts, and we can't get rid of October because of the huge Halloween holiday. Naturally, we also need to hang on to December because of Christmas.
When it comes right down to it, November is the month that has to go. It's boring, it usually has bad weather. We'd probably all be better off if the calendar went right from October to December. But wait, you say? What about the holidays in November?
I'm glad you brought that up. Let's look at November's holidays, shall we? First, we have Veterans' Day. Hey, I personally appreciate the contributions of veterans as much as the next person. But let's face it. National pride and patriotism are on the way out. If we keep celebrating our war heroes, we might alienate some third world country that resents our power anyway. We don't have acts of war or terrorism anymore. We have manmade disasters. We could celebrate Disaster Control Day, but that could easily be slipped into August. There's not much happening that month anyway.
The other holiday in November would be Thanksgiving. And we don't want to remember that holiday anymore because that epitomizes our failure as a nation. We've managed to corrupt the true meaning of Easter and Christmas. We've enlarged and celebrated Halloween until it's becoming a major national holiday. But somehow we just haven't truly been able to mess up Thanksgiving.
Oh, we've tried. But gluttony and sporting events couldn't quite erase the thankfulness this holiday inspired. We tried connecting it to the biggest sales day of the year. And sure, we got some people who gave up Thanksgiving in order to sit in lines all night, waiting for stores to open at 5:00 a.m. But still we couldn't get rid of that thankfulness. It's hard to corrupt thankfulness. It's almost impossible to commercialize it. We've even had people try to distort history and take the thankfulness out completely, referring to the holiday as the day we celebrated "sticking it to the Native Americans".
The only way we're going to get rid of this holiday is to do away with November all together. I've noticed that some stores are already doing that. The first week of November I couldn't find any fall decorations to save my life. Christmas decorations were up in the store, and they were even playing Christmas music. I think removing November from the calendar would just be the official gesture to what's been going on for years.
I don't know about you, but in our house, we plan on celebrating Thanksgiving for a good many years to come. For one thing, I'm going to be grateful that God hasn't given our nation everything we actually deserve.