Reform of American Holidays & Monuments

I lived in South Africa a couple of years ago. South African holidays always seemed more inspiring to me than U.S. holidays, when I lived there. Their holidays were named things like "Youth Day" or "Women's Day." After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I liked the South African holidays because they were named for abstract ideas rather than for particular people. You could get behind the spirit of the day and not just behind a person who was fading into history.

When I got back to the States, I started fixating on Columbus Day. Not everyone is in agreement that Columbus was the hero that he is celebrated as, yet we still have a holiday for him. I decided that it would be a lot more meaningful for me if the holiday was named Adventurer's Day instead of Columbus Day. That way we could still honor Columbus , but also honor other explorer's like Lewis and Clark or the first team that went to the moon. I also really liked that Columbus Day weekend could be transformed into Adventure weekend.

So once I started down this path, I got a little carried away and decided to rename all American holidays. On my calendar:

• President's Day -> Leadership Day
• MLK Day -> Civil Right's Day (so that we can honor all the civil's rights heroes to come)
  
• Veteran's Day and Memorial -> War & Peace Day
• Independence Day -> Freedom Day (that way we could celebrate not only when the US got its independence, but also when black people and women were granted the right to vote)
• I also added Earth Day to the mix

If you want to view a presentation about the reformation movement, click here.
Stay tuned for more information about the reformation of American Monuments ....