Why I Rate Easter as My Top Holiday
And it has almost nothing to do with the holidays
What makes for a great holiday?
While there are a wide range of traditional holidays, there are many new holidays being created every day. (Thank you greeting card companies!) In fact, my bank is closed today for Washington’s birthday instead of President’s Day.
(Quick notes for those who don’t have the details: George Washington was born on February 22nd, not on the 20th. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th. We used to get a day off for both of those days until it was decided to combine them together into President’s Day. The extra day off was used in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.)
What makes a great holiday? That certainly depends on what you want from a holiday. I would suggest that the best holidays give you a day off. That will remove grandparents day or third-cousins-twice-removed day from the running, along with greeting cards day. However, that does leave us with a wide selection to choose from — even more if you are a banker.
I would also suggest that a great holiday should apply to as many people as possible. This can be a natural or enforced part of your cultural context, like Christmas or Thanksgiving for Americans, or artificial the way that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s day.
Which holiday wins out for me?
This won’t be a difficult choice to guess. It should be fairly obvious from my image above. But there is more to my interest in Easter than just baskets of candy, a wonderful ham dinner, or stop-animation specials featuring colored eggs. (Well it does tie into one of these parts.)
So yes, Easter is my favorite holiday. Why do I choose Easter? Would you believe it is because of jelly beans?
Let me see if I can explain this one.
In America, there are two basic types of jelly beans. You can get fruit-flavored jelly beans or you can get the spiced variety. The fruity jelly beans are more popular than the spiced variety. This goes to the point that spiced jelly beans only being available during the Easter season. Hold on, let me take a moment to talk about what I mean by spiced jelly beans.
Spiced jelly beans are flavored after various spices. The flavor does not work with the taste buds of all customers. (Think about how many people appreciate those black jelly beans. My favorites!) Here are the options:
RED: cinnamon ORANGE: ginger PURPLE: clove GREEN: spearmint WHITE: peppermint PINK: wintergreen BLACK: licorice
Hopefully, I will be able to stock up on my annual supply of spiced jelly beans to enjoy them for the rest of the year!
What is your favorite flavor of jelly bean?
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