Isn't my title lovely? It looks like I'm about to embark on a thesis for a capstone course.
Frank Day was never my idea, that credit goes to the magnificent Rachel Cohn and her novels Gingerbread, Shrimp, and Cupcake. This threesome feature my second favorite female protagonist since Jessica Darling, the spunky spirited Cyd Charisse. She's got the verbal lingo of the Gilmore Girls coupled with some badass behavior that lives with the motto of "I'll be as wild as I wanna be." Her parents are Sid (stepdad) and Nancy, she lives in a huge Pacific Heights mansion that gets dubbed Alcatrez on more than one occasion and has bunches of half-sibs and real dad, Frank.
Despite Cyd's wild child demeanor and anti-school attitude, she is unbelivably relatable, or at least to me she is. Cyd's got mad love for her man Shrimp, a short surfer stud and carries her stuffed doll Gingerbread everywhere despite the fact that everyone has got to put in their two cents on how a 16+ year shouldn't be toting ragdolls in their backpack.
I've worshipped these books since I was in grade school and it really hurts to know that both Shrimp and Cupcake are both 2200 miles away from me and totally need to be mailed to me pronto. That aside, in Shrimp the second in the series, Cyd and her family celebrate their own kind of holiday because the parentals various religions make it impossible to do both Christmas and Hannukah.
The holiday is Frank Day, a day devoted to Ol Blue Eyes himself (not to be confused with Cyd's real dad). Everyone watches Sinatra films, listens to his tunes and even stepdad Sid reads all the headline news a la Frank News.
Why does this matter so much to me? This single day sounds better than Christmas could ever be. And I'm growing a little more sure each day I won't be celebrating Christmas when I'm older.
This isn't something I woke up one day and decided upon out of grinch-esque feelings over not getting a phone in the eighth grade for Christmas. I've done a great deal of thinking about the holidays in general and I've noticed a pattern.
I just really don't like any of them (with Halloween being the exception of course).
Why is Halloween the exception?
1) Celebrated in the evening so you have the whole day to prepare adequately for it.
2) The one day of the year where we encourage children to accept candy from strangers and go into their houses even if they're scared shitless.
3) You get to dress up. As anything you want.
4) Free candy and money depending on the neighborhood.
5) If you're at a party and you meet an attractive guy and never get their name, they will fondly be remembered as "Hot Dracula"
6) The Slut Rule
7) Catholic high schools take the day after off for All Saint's Day. The perks of life at DB.
8) Somebody in my family gets me another stuffed ghost
9) I love dark colors
10) Late night horror movies are the best!! Watch Hostel II all alone in a dark room really loudly, its pretty sweet.
This beautiful day aside, the rest of the holidays I just can't get into. Christmas is probably the biggest of these evils, a holiday that over the years has been commercialized to near-death but still manages to crawl over to you and gasp out, "PIER ONE...SALE...FLATWARE...20% OFF" before collaspsing under a tree riddled with ornaments.
Some other fiendish friends include:
Valentine's Day (where the entire world decides to go Noah's Ark on your ass for 24 hours)
Easter (eggs and children across the country get into some baby blue and Pepto pink for a rabbit)
and jumping back to:
Christmas (Kriss Kringle attempts to put you in a chokehold with a candy cane crowbar until you buy every single Bratz doll on the shelf)
Frank Day is so much less stressful and much more original than celebrating these holidays which have been around forever and are a nightmare to plan. When I was younger, I used to get stomach cramps in the gift wrap aisle trying to decide on a color scheme for the Christmas monster. It's not about the message anymore, the message is clear on Monday mornings when the teacher makes you write an essay on what you got and read it aloud. The kid with the baseball mitt gets trumped by the spoiled brat whose father bought him something from the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog everytime.
Haha, no. I'm gonna go my own way. I'm really not sure what a holiday from me would entail and obviously I'm going to try to make one up Johnny on the spot (though you can count on good clothes and for some reason my head is saying a boat should be involved.)
Love to you all,
Heather
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