Geez, a number of months have passed since my last entry. I could talk about my 30th birthday celebration, which was probably the most indulgent time of my entire life. I could talk about the karaoke contest. I could talk about my new girlfriend. But instead I'll talk about something completely irrelevant, yet on my mind. Fathers' Day.

(And it seems to me that you would put the apostrophe after the "s" there, since the day belongs to more than one father.)

I was on a messageboard where one person said that she didn't celebrate Fathers' Day, Mothers' Day, or Valentine's. This was under the argument that if one wants to celebrate a father, mother, or lover, that it should be done on a regular basis in the first place. It's not the first time I heard this argument. H.L. Mencken is quoted as saying the following about Mothers' Day:

"What should be obvious and indisputable requires a public ceremonial to prove it! Why not a day for wearing little tin bathtubs to prove that one bathes, in the patriotic American manner, once a week? Why not white hatbands for gentlemen who are true to their wives? It is precisely the mark of the cad that he makes a public boast of what is inseparable from decency. He is the fellow who marches grandly in preparedness parades to show off his valor, his patriotism, his willingness to die for his country. He is the fellow who insults his mother by making a spectacle of the fact that he is on good terms with her."

People who boast about this quote seem to overlook the fact that Mencken was not criticizing the holiday itself. He was criticizing the trend at the time to wear a white carnation in public on the day, as this was a ways of telling other people "Look, I love my mother!" I'm with Mencken on that. It's stupid to assume that any man we'd see in his time [i]not[/i] wearing the flower on that holiday is someboy who doesn't love his mother. We have a term for that in my religion: wearing the Good-Guy Badge.

Well anyway, here was my response on the messageboard:

I've heard this argument (and H. L. Mencken's similar comments in regards to Mothers' Day) before. I do think most people are driven to buy gifts on these days due to guilty feelings of obligation, but I don't see why this has to be an either/or thing.

My father has always enjoyed the gestures of the holiday, and I'm happy to comply. Getting together one extra gift, card, and long-distance phone call every year is hardly a burden for me. But is this day, along with Xmas and his birthday, the only days I show my appreciation for him? Of course not.

If a person and his or her parents have a mutual recognition of these holidays being ultimately meaningless, and have thus chosen not to recognize them, great. But if I were to tell my father one year "I'm not giving you anything for Fathers' Day, because it's a holiday that implies I shouldn't appreciate what you've done as a Father on any other day of the year, blah blah blah", I wouldn't come off as thoughtful. Just cheap.