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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 2018341" data-attributes="member: 6957">Feh upon it! I much prefer St. Valentine's Day to Generic Winter Festival #4. Guess what, I want to be able to celebrate something that has meaning! If it excludes some people then let them create a holiday for themselves. (I recommend March 4th for GM's Day, though that really is a celebration caused by pecuniary interests. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) There are also many feast days that get ignored by most calendars in modern times, with enough digging everybody can find something. (Even flagpole sitters: St. Simeon Stylites.)As for the pagan survival, many early Christian holidays were created in that fashion, either whole cloth, or moving the day to coincide with an existing holiday. And that too is alright with me.  Sadly, many of the manufactured saints have been removed from the calendar.This isn't intended as a religious discussion, though it is leaning that way, holidays and their histories are just interesting. Even Groundhog Day. (I still remember the year that the groundhog being televised had died in its burrow, drowning in a January thaw... What they pulled out of the burrow was a little the worse for wear.)Stupid Groundhog Day joke: So we pulled the little rascal out of his burrow, and showed him his shadow. Well, first he looked kind of puzzled, then he started jumping up and down, then he spun around three times, and finally he just exploded!Since then we have had an earthquake, followed by three tornadoes, and I don't mind telling you that now we're really worried! The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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