Labor Day
Labor Day. It used to mean the end of summer for me, with school right around the corner. But today school starts in August. Thankfully, I’m too old for school. And the dress code used to change as well. No more white shoes. Or straw hats. Does anyone pay attention to that anymore? I doubt it. Not in a day and age when people wear blue jeans to church, and shorts everywhere. And I can’t remember when I saw a pair of white shoes on an adult male.
All I know now is that this is the start of the year’s final quarter with major holidays to follow. These are the dress up holidays. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. We dress up ourselves and we dress up our houses. And we buy stuff. It’s a little weird to have holidays as the engine of our economy, but it's true, especially Christmas. It almost feels like it's our patriotic duty to spend money, and there will be breathless reporting to tell us how we’re doing.
As for me, I’m going to try and stay calm. Tone down the excitement, and see if I can find the core meaning of the days we celebrate. I never have understood Halloween, it mostly seemed to be about candy, and I think I can safely ignore it, but I get Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I do enjoy them. I just need to find a way to bring them back into focus and make them once again be about something other than things.