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International Sweater Vestival

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Today is the International Sweater Vestival, also known as Sweater Vestival or the Festival of Sweater Vests. Always occurring on the first Friday of December—identified by some as the second Friday after Thanksgiving—it celebrates the sartorial splendor inherent in the collective donning of sweater vests.

The first known mention of “Sweater Vestival” occurred in 2008 when Carolyn Johnson interviewed the holiday’s creator for the Boston Globe. Who is this mysterious genius? Is it Johnson herself? Perhaps fearing scandal, Johnson isn’t telling; one might say she’s playing her cards close to the vest. Here is an excerpt from the article.

Q: Why should I wear a vest? Isn’t this a made-up holiday?

A: It certainly is made-up, and that is exactly why you should take part. All holidays are made-up – a collective recognition of some person or historic event or cause. These can range from the sincere to the ironic to the nonsensical. In apparent seriousness, for example, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm established Narcolepsy Awareness Day on March 9. A more arch holiday is 11/11, set aside for the Corduroy Appreciation Club to “hail the wale.” Name your cause and there’s a day: International Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19), World Wide Knit in Public Day (the second Saturday in June), or National Boss Day (Oct. 16).

The purity of a holiday’s origins tends to get buried in the commercial detritus that blossoms in the middle aisle of local drugstores. So understand that the Sweater Vestival is a nascent holiday – a rare opportunity to get in on the ground level of a holiday, before manufacturers are churning out tiny, edible, foil-wrapped vests.

[Editor’s note: seen on store shelves since 2015]

Sweater Vestival Day

tiny, edible foil-wrapped vests

 

More importantly, it is not a holiday about historical figures or causes or ideals: It is about all the other people who wear the vest.

Q: Can you tell me more about the holiday’s origins?

A: The second Friday after Thanksgiving is a lull in a jam-packed holiday season and a perfect day for people to continue the holiday cheer with something subtle yet uplifting. Unlike other faux holidays – such as Festivus, which first appeared on the sitcom “Seinfeld” as a protest against holiday-season commercialism – Vestival is not a joke at all. It also happens to be funny.

Q: Why is Vestival important?

A: On a superficial level, Sweater Vestival isn’t about something “deep.” In contrast, on a superficial level most other holidays are: Veterans Day is about the serious topic of honoring soldiers who have fought in wars to protect this country. President’s Day salutes our forefathers. Valentine’s Day is about love. But if you look beneath the surface, Valentine’s Day is more about candy and overpriced bouquets. Presidents’ Day has become synonymous with sales at car dealerships, and many people see Veterans Day as just another day off, not an opportunity to consider wars and the weight of history.

Despite its seemingly shallow artifice, though, Vestival carries unusual depth. People wearing vests smile at each other in recognition, discuss the origins of their vests, or give each other compliments. At a time when people can feel more alone than ever, wearing a sweater vest is a reason to connect.

What are you waiting for? Grab those thrift store finds, gifts from Christmas past languishing in the back of your closet, or any sweater you have the urge to liberate from its sleeves. (Common sense advice: obtain permission before wielding the scissors if the aforementioned sweater belongs to someone else.)

Embrace the cold shoulder(s) and have a happy International Sweater Vestival!

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National American Teddy Bear Day

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National American Teddy Bear Day celebrates the cuddly stuffed animal with a remarkable history that includes a US president and a preacher spouting conspiracy theories.

Today’s date coincides with a hunting trip taken in November 1902. The governor of Mississippi invited Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, to a bear hunt, but after three days, Roosevelt hadn’t spotted one. To keep the president’s trip from ending in failure, the guides set the dogs loose; they tracked down an old black bear and attacked it.

They brought the wounded bear back to camp and tied it to a tree for the president. When Roosevelt saw the old bear, he refused to shoot it because to do so would be unsportsmanlike. However, since it was injured, Roosevelt directed the men to put the bear down to end its suffering.

Word traveled quickly across the country. The Washington Post ran this headline on November 15, 1902:

PRESIDENT CALLED AFTER THE BEAST HAD BEEN LASSOED,
BUT HE REFUSED TO MAKE AN UNSPORTSMANLIKE SHOT

Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew a single panel that appeared in the Post the next day. In it, the president stands in the foreground, a guide and bear behind him. Berryman depicted the bear as a cub trembling in fear. He began to include the cub in other drawings of Roosevelt, forever linking him to bears.

national american teddy bear day

Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner,  saw Berryman’s cartoons and was inspired to make a stuffed bear. Michtom wrote to Roosevelt and asked his permission to call the toy “Teddy’s Bear.” Although the president agreed to lend his name to the new invention, he is said to have doubted it would ever amount to much in the toy business.

The runaway popularity of the cuddly bears led Michtom to mass-produce them, forming the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1903. It soon became a multimillion-dollar business.  By 1907, the toy had become so popular that a preacher in Michigan warned that replacing dolls with toy bears would destroy little girls’ maternal instincts. Reverend Michael G. Esper raised the alarm:

Race suicide, the gravest danger which confronts this nation today, is being fostered and encouraged by the fad for supplanting the good old dolls of our childhood with the horrible monstrosity known as the ‘Teddy Bear.’

Newspapers in 27 states picked up his sermon, including the Boston Daily Globe and The Washington Post, which ran it on its front page. More than a hundred stories promoted Esper’s dire warning, an early example of a crackpot theory going viral. Of course, if the fearmongering prediction had been true, there would be no one left to read (or write) this.

A Teddy’s Bear made in 1903 is owned by the National Museum of American History. It’s in perfect condition. And the human race carries on.

national american teddy bear day

Happy National American Teddy Bear Day!

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Sadie Hawkins Day

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Sadie Hawkins DayToday is Sadie Hawkins Day, an American rite of passage for generations of teenagers. Misogynistic, antiquated, and awkward for all involved, it supposedly empowers girls to switch gender roles and ask out the boys. Did we mention it’s misogynistic and antiquated? Its true origin is much, much worse.

Sadie Hawkins was a character created in 1937 by Al Capp in his Li’l Abner cartoon, set in the fictional hillbilly town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Sadie was the “homeliest gal in all them hills.” She waited in vain for a suitor to show up at her door, but not a single prospective husband came a-courting. After fifteen years, Sadie was in full panic mode, and her father didn’t want to support a spinster daughter for the rest of her life.

Sadie’s dad decided to get creative. He called all the unmarried men of Dogpatch together and declared it Sadie Hawkins Day. The town’s bachelors would run for their lives with Sadie in hot pursuit. The “lucky” man she caught would have to marry her. As her Pappy explained, “Th’ one she ketches’ll be her husband.”

Sadie_Hawkins_Day origin lil abner comic strip

The rest of the spinsters in Dogpatch (how many were there?) thought the race was an excellent idea and made Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory yearly event, much to the chagrin of the bachelors in town, who had no say in the matter.

The Sadie Hawkins Dance appeared in the strip sometime later, taking place the night before the race. The spinsters wore hobnail boots to stomp on the feet of the single men, potentially making them easier to catch in the next day’s race.

The Li’l Abner comic strip debuted in 1934. From the start, it was bawdy and filled with sexual innuendo, not to mention scantily-clad, bucket-breasted women. But it was apparently considered wholesome family fare. In 1939, Life magazine ran a story stating that 201 colleges were celebrating Sadie Hawkins Day.

By 1952, it was reportedly celebrated at over 40,000 different locations. Eventually, it evolved into an all-day event. Capp wrote of the phenomenon:

It’s become my responsibility (to include Sadie Hawkins Day every year in the strip). It doesn’t happen on any set day in November; it happens on the day I say it happens. I get tens of thousands of letters from colleges, communities, and church groups, starting around July, asking me what day, so they can make plans.

Li’l Abner was an enormous success for its creator, who grew rich through merchandising, movie deals, product tie-ins, and a short-lived TV puppet show. In the 1960s, he underwent an ideological transformation from a New Deal Democrat to a hippie-hater and a close friend of Richard Nixon. He became a highly paid speaker on the college campus lecture circuit. His routine was to insult and provoke his audience into a shouting match.

sadie hawkins day al cappCapp attempted to use his fame to “seduce” young women. The biography Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary characterized him as something of a failed serial rapist since the few women who reported him to the authorities always got away. (Capp had lost one of his legs as a boy and routinely removed his prosthetic leg along with his pants.) One would-be victim described tipping him over like a floor lamp, as he crashed into the hotel furniture.

Of course, grotesque slapstick aside, there was nothing funny about his sexual assaults. And the winking acceptance by those who knew the truth underscored the culture’s lack of regard for young women. In 1971, Capp succeeded in physically forcing a 20-year-old Wisconsin college student to perform oral sex on him. To her credit, and against overwhelming pressure, the student pressed charges.

Capp was not charged with rape, but with three lesser counts: indecent exposure, sodomy, and “attempted adultery.” He was only found guilty of the latter. Although his career and reputation never fully recovered, he continued to publish the Li’l Abner comic strip until 1977. He died two years later.

Sadie Hawkins Day is not what it seems. She wasn’t a real person. It has nothing to do with women’s emancipation. What do you think? Does the true story of Sadie Hawkins Day and its twisted creator matter if no one knows it, or cares?  Should it continue to be celebrated as harmless fun or be consigned to the dustbin of history?

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Chaos Never Dies Day

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chaos never dies dayToday is Chaos Never Dies Day. At least, I think it is. When I first wrote about this unofficial holiday a decade ago, I had no idea I’d get tangled up in that chaos thanks to the Internet and a Florida man’s radio talk show. (More on that later.)

Why this holiday? Since no one has claimed responsibility for creating it, there’s no one to ask. Although a current AI search traces the first mention to 2016, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine still has a snapshot of my post about it from November 2015, and I can tell you I didn’t make it up—unless I traveled through time to give myself the idea.

I’m reminded of debates over whether Kyle Reese could hop in a time machine and sleep with Sarah Connor, thereby fathering the person who would one day send him back. What? That paradox in The Terminator still gives me a headache, so I’m just going to have to let Skynet win this one. Please don’t judge me.

Why today? November 9th might have been chosen because it coincides with the Northeast blackout of 1965. Or the day in 1888 when the last-known victim of Jack the Ripper was found. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, why not both?

What is chaos? I’m reminded of  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s response when asked to describe obscenity. He couldn’t define it, he said, “but I know it when I see it.”  Chaos can be equally hard to explain, at least for me, depending on myriad factors such as timing, location, and circumstances.

In Greek mythology, Chaos was the first primeval god to come into existence at the creation of the universe. Her name comes from the Latin khaos, meaning  “gap” or the space between heaven and earth.

Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics that describes the behavior of non-linear systems and attempts to find underlying order in what appear to be random events or data.

Here are a few quotes illustrating different views of chaos.

We live in a rainbow of chaos. – Paul Cezanne
Freedom is just chaos, with better lighting. – Alan Dean Foster
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. –  Henry Miller
I like order. It allows me to have chaos in my head. – Dwight Yoakum

Here’s the dictionary definition.

Chaos
noun
1. A state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.
2. Any confused, disorderly mass: a chaos of meaningless phrases.
3. The infinity of space or formless matter supposed to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe.
4. The personification of this in any of several ancient Greek myths.
5. Obsolete. A chasm or abyss.

And here comes my role in the story.

Chaos, 2017

On November 8, 2017, I was invited to speak about Chaos Never Dies Day on a radio show. With less than 24 hours’ notice, I scrambled to cram the online equivalent of Chaos Theory for Dummies to prepare.

The show’s booker told me I’d also be asked to explain how I came to write about weird holidays and talk about any notable ones taking place before the end of the year. I gathered information on two of the wackiest: Start Your Own Country Day and Tió de Nadal, which involves a Christmas log that craps out presents when beaten with a stick.

He didn’t tell me the show’s theme was “Are we Stuck in a Bad News Hell?” or that the guests before me would be talking about parenting in the wake of a mass shooting in Texas.

The Michael S Robinson Show banner

When Michael S. Robinson introduced me, I described the beauty of the order hidden within what we perceive as chaos, using the example of football, which can’t be predicted in strictly linear terms by the sum of the players’ and team’s rankings, because of variables like team chemistry, whether it’s a home or away game, the quarterback’s attitude, etc. Since I’m confident you’ll never hear the interview, I’m going to say it was brilliant.

But Mr. Robinson wanted to talk about everyday chaos. How did I try so hard yet end up woefully unprepared? I didn’t just strike out. I left my bat in the dugout and brought a cello to the plate. I’d like to credit chaos in some artful way by suggesting it created a perfect trajectory I can’t identify. That’s hogwash, of course—or is it? (It is.)

In my defense, I’d never heard the radio show before, and in my rush to speak knowledgeably about the theory behind the holiday and bring the funny about two other wacky holidays, I didn’t take the time to check it out. I was never asked about any of that.

And during the call, I had feedback blasting my words back at me, making it almost impossible to speak normally. There’s nothing worse than hearing your own voice faltering in near-real time. Again, chaos. It’s probably just as well they spelled my name Kathlene Zaya.

$99,000 Answer The Honeymooners Ralph KramdenAll this reminds me of the $99,000 Answer, an episode of The Honeymooners in which Ralph Kramden prepares to go on a game show where he’ll be required to identify songs by the first few bars.

He rents a piano and has Ed Norton play musical selections all week to prepare for the event. Ed always warms up by playing the first few bars of “Swanee River,” which never fails to annoy Ralph.

The night of the show, the first tune played is “Swanee River,” which he can’t name. He loses despite all his preparation. I laughed but felt bad for Ralph, perpetual loser.

It also reminds me of the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David did something stupid or thoughtless because he misunderstood the context of a situation, or maybe because he was a jerk. (In other words, every episode.)

Fictional chaos theorist Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” So do laughs, but not always the ones you want or on the schedule you’d prefer.

Chaos, Now

Unsurprisingly, I’ve never been asked to return to Mr. Robinson’s show. Perhaps my invitation got lost in the (e)mail. There’s certainly much to discuss: Trump’s hair—pure chaos!—or the discovery that the Mayans invented television. (In honor of today’s holiday and to wash away the image of Trump, please click on that last link for the whacked-out philosophical stylings of a character in one of my favorite movies, Repo Man. Better yet, watch it.)

Also, in the first update I wrote in 2017, I misidentified fictional character Ian Malcolm as David Malcom. I regret the error and know that my use of flawed web research has introduced yet another tiny bit of chaos to the Internet. Whether I created this holiday or not, I guess you could say I’m doing my part.

Whether you choose to fight chaos today or welcome it with open arms, have a wonderful Chaos Never Dies Day! See you next year.

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