What Could Be More Sacred Than a Monday Off?

The earliest of the recorded ceremonies was in 1863. With the horrors of the Civil War still daily occurrences, the women of Columbus, Miss., laid flowers on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers, a rare display of unbiased compassion.

At the close of that war, the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans organization, declared that May 30, 1868, would be “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

He said he hoped that the observance would be taken up “from year to year,” and that people would “in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

And they did. In Orange County this year, we observed Memorial Day in the customary way --by watching an insanely dangerous auto race in Indianapolis and by jacking up rents for the summer in Balboa. We memorialized whatever it is we memorialize not on the 30th but on the nearest Monday, so we could get three straight days off work. Memorial Day is, in fact, Memorial Day Weekend.

Some holidays still don’t consistently fall on Mondays or Fridays, but it’s just a matter of time. What we truly cherish is the three-day weekend. Sooner or later the authorities will bring these renegade holidays into line.

But that won’t be enough. We must change the concept of these holidays as well, for they have fallen badly behind the times and no longer reflect the sentiment of the typical Orange County resident. If the state Legislature won’t do anything, the county supervisors should act, if only ceremonially.

They should:

Get rid of Lincoln’s Birthday, which is always on Feb. 12. The Lincoln hasn’t been a status symbol for years; now they are BMW and Mercedes and Porsche.

But, as someone said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. In some states they combined Lincoln’s with Washington’s birthday (the state or the Redskins?), and those people wound up losing that extra day off. What we need is a Lincington’s Birthday that is a four- day weekend. We must, however, keep it in February. There’s usually still snow at Mammoth in February.

Free up Independence Day. It is one of the few holidays celebrated in all states on the same day, July 4, so you seldom get it at either end of a weekend. There might be opposition from reactionary factions to changing the date, but there is some room for maneuvering.

For example, on June 28, 1776, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to the Continental Congress. On July 1, it was debated for the first time. On July 2, the Congress adopted a resolution favoring separation from Great Britain. The declaration was debated by the Congress for the first time on July 3. It was adopted on July 4. And something certainly must have happened on the 6th and 7th.

So there is something to commemorate on whatever date falls on Monday. Just what it is doesn’t matter, as long as we still can get bottle rockets and use them to incinerate our neighbors’ roofs.

Reappraise Veterans Day. It is always on Nov. 11, and you sometimes have to wait years for it to make its way toward the weekend. This is particularly annoying to merchants, who urge that the best way to honor the armed forces is by starting your Christmas shopping. It’s hard to build the proper buying frenzy during a lone holiday stuck in the middle of the week.

When intense Christmas shopping finally does erupt, merchants rejoice, and that’s called Thanksgiving. Its only fault is that not everyone gets all four days off. Let’s work on that.

Do something about Christmas, and that won’t be easy. It is the touchiest problem of all, because there is a sizable faction that wants to preserve Christmas as the most sacred of Christian holidays.

This faction contends that the very word holiday stems from the word holy. What could be more holy than the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, they argue.

Obviously, they believe in the meaning of holidays, which is why I think we can dismiss them as being too far off the mainstream. If it were proved, for example, that Jesus actually had been born on Jan. 1, they’d want to celebrate it on Jan. 1. Imagine what that would do to the bowl games!

Perhaps it would be best to leave Christmas be. If such a radical faction were aroused, it might broaden its attack and ask, for example, why we don’t honor the actual birthday of our first President, who led our Revolution, then singlehandedly prevented the nation from returning to de facto monarchy. Merely selling cherry pie at coffee shops hardly seems enough, they might argue.

And then they’d start wondering why we all aren’t at least melancholy with memories of dead soldiers. What a way to bring down a really fun weekend.