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David Spates Did Relaxation Day sneak up on you? How are you going to celebrate the holiday?
Some folks think Christmas is a big deal, but mid-August, in
my mind, truly is the most wonderful time of the year. It's been
a special holiday in our family for years. As a matter of fact,
we enjoy the holiday so much that we try to celebrate it year-round. The holiday of which I speak is, of course,
National Relaxation Day. Did it sneak up on you again this year?
Don't worry. There's still time to decorate a Relaxation Day
tree, and if you haven't completed all of your Relaxation Day
shopping, rest assured that the stores save all of their really
good Relaxation Day sales for the last-minute shoppers. Many years ago, someone somewhere decreed
that Aug. 15 shall henceforth be National Relaxation Day. I don't
know if it was the president who established the holiday. It
may have been a congressional mandate. For all I know, it may
be a special holiday that our forefathers brought over from the
Old Country -- a day when an Irish lad could cast aside his plow
and lounge about on a lush green hillside. Or perhaps National
Relaxation Day is nothing more than one of those Madison Avenue
creations designed to boost widget sales during August, traditionally
the poorest month for widget sales, if I'm not mistaken. But you know what? The origin of Relaxation
Day is of little importance. It's the sentiment that counts on
a deeply personal holiday such as this. It's up to the individual
to discover the most appropriate way to celebrate for themselves.
There is no clearly defined agenda for Relaxation Day -- a clearly
defined agenda would fly in the face of everything that Relaxation
Day is supposed to stand for. Therefore, you and yours are solely
responsible for enjoying Relaxation Day appropriately. In our family, Relaxation Day has always been
treated with the utmost level of seriousness. We don't let a
holiday like Relaxation Day go by without its due observance. Allow me to provide a glimpse into a typical
Relaxation Day at the Spates casa. First off, there really aren't too many activities
planned in the morning. In fact, anyone who wakes before noon
had better have a good reason for doing so ... 12:30 is pushing
it. To hit the ground running on Relaxation Day, in a manner
of speaking, we try to remain asleep at least until 1 p.m. Anything earlier than that and you're just
going through the motions, and there's nothing worse than someone
who doesn't appreciate the gravity and importance of Relaxation
Day. If you can't sleep until 1 p.m. on Relaxation Day, then
maybe you need to take a long look at your future in the Spates
family. We don't take kindly to relatives who don't pull their
weight on such a significant holiday. Since we wake up around 1 or so, breakfast
is pretty much a moot point. That leaves us free to focus our
endeavors on lunch. With breakfast out of the picture, lunch
moves up the ladder and becomes the most important meal of the
day. Our traditional lunch feast includes delivery pizza. Some
families prepare wonderfully large and varied menus for Relaxation
Day lunch, but to me that borders on blasphemy. It wreaks of
effort. Any meal that includes more than two steps is not what
Relaxation Day is all about. Sometimes I feel bad that the pizza
delivery guy has to work during the holidays, but I'm able to
put my and my family's needs ahead of his. It's all about priorities. With the pizza down and the boxes piled up
in the living room corner, it's time for the mid-afternoon nap.
It's one of our unwritten Relaxation Day rules -- no one is allowed
to sustain consciousness for more than two hours. By the time the mid-afternoon nap has concluded,
it's almost time for Relaxation Day dinner. What's for dinner?
Hit redial on the phone. There's your dinner. While we wait for
the pizza guy to make his second trip to our cheerfully relaxed
home, we sit around, with our feet up, and tell one another the
reasons we're thankful to be so relaxed. Sometimes we get a little
choked up. There are so many reasons to stay relaxed, after all,
and there's nothing better than sharing the spirit of the season
with your family. The pizza guy finds our home again. We tip
even better during the holidays, so you can bet that the dinner
pizzas arrive piping hot. Again, I feel sorry for the pizza guy.
Sometimes I feel as though we should invite him into our home
to share in the bounty of relaxation we have been blessed with.
I've never actually invited him in, however. I'm afraid that
would cause too much uncomfortable tension, and tensions are
what we're trying to forget. So how will you and yours celebrate National
Relaxation Day? It falls on a Wednesday this year, so that makes
holiday travel a little tougher -- there's no three-day weekend
to work with. What I suggest is to take Thursday and Friday.
That way you can leave the office Tuesday afternoon, drive to
Grandma's house that night, and wake up nice and late on Relaxation
Day on Wednesday. Then you have the rest of the week to recover.
I know how those holidays can take it out of you. Besides, the Friday after that is National Thriftshop Day, and you know what kind of crazies are driving around on that day. It's better to just stay home and relax. · · · |