There are far too few American holidays on which drinking heavily is promoted.
On Christmas, you’re not exactly supposed to get trashed, but I understand that most of you down a couple brewskis and get into fistfights with your Uncle Bob from Idaho anyway.
We Jews have a similar holiday called Passover during which we slurp down four cups of wine and yell at our grannies.
But the only real American holiday where drinking is promoted is Super Bowl Sunday. As urban legend has it, domestic abuse is at its peak every year on Super Bowl Sunday because of the combination of booze and high bets on the Buffalo Bills that go down. But that’s just an urban legend and, for the most part, the day is one of Rolling Rocks, revelry and Rolaids.
Suffice it to say one day is not enough.
I propose a holiday planted smack dab between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It will neither be named Thankswiener– the day on which we thank the Takomawia Indians for bringing hot dogs to the starving pilgrims in 1567– nor Hollowgiving– the holiday of giving money to the rich.
From this day forth, November 10th will be known as AlcoHalloween. On this day, the fat and old alike will parade down the streets of their neighborhoods dressed up as the debonair studs they see themselves as when they’re drunk. Oh yes, and of course, no girls allowed.
The men will go door-to-door and each friendly neighbor will jovially welcome them with the greeting, “Drink or Bucket?” If they are true men, they will forego the bucket and go down the road of true intoxication. But if they are men of poor constitution, they will empty their alcoholic pasts into the bucket.
Imagine the possibilities. Fat, drunken guys clumsily T.P.ing the neighbor’s trees, puking in sewers and running into oncoming traffic.
I hear that there is a holiday called “Mardi Gras” that is similar to this. However, that is in February and in New Orleans. AlcoHalloween will be right here in November and will be full of free alcohol, lots more public urination, and a tight fear in your stomach that the next guy that comes to your door might punch you in the face and steal your bottle of Tequila.
It could even be for a good cause like AIDS research or The Coal Miner’s Union of America. Drink-or-Bucketers could gather sponsors from around the area who will donate money to worthy causes for each libation the revelers ingest.
I have heard the anti-AlchoHalloween right say that the holiday is dangerous, will kill people, and promotes alcohol abuse. But don’t things like pursuing an acting career do the same thing? How many sober, out of work actors have you seen today? I rest my case.
AlcoHalloween will be a day for the everyman to drink to his heart’s discontent and eventual failure. It will be a day of camaraderie, brotherhood, fighting and depression — the one day of the year where you can be treated like a foreign businessman at a strip club. You’ll get a lot of free drinks and everyone, at least in your mind, will like you.
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