St. Louis Post-Dispatch Bill McClellan column

Nov. 29--Should today be a holiday?

Of course, it should. Those of us who have to work today will get little done. We ate too much yesterday. It is considered impolite not to eat too much.

So this is a perfect time to review an old column. I'm talking about Harold Bruker's marvelous suggestion that we move Halloween and Thanksgiving into the same week and make that week a holiday. Fall break. He figured we could make Halloween the last Saturday in October and Thanksgiving the next Thursday. He reasoned that Thanksgiving is too late in the year to be a harvest celebration.

Many people liked that idea.

However, others took exception to a comment I added. I mentioned that we have a history of moving holidays around. Memorial Day was once May 30. Now it's the last Monday in May. Columbus Day was once Oct. 12. Now it's the second Monday in October. We've even moved Washington's birthday.

That history led me to write this: "Neither Halloween nor Thanksgiving has any emotional tie-in to a certain day. We can safely move them around."

Fred H. was one of many readers who pointed out my error.

He wrote: "In the case of Halloween, this is dead wrong. Absolutely, totally and completely wrong! Halloween is the Eve of All Hallows, otherwise known as the Feast of All Saints in the Catholic calendar. It is a feastday, not a holiday! Of course, the world has hijacked the eve of this religious feastday, just as they have hijacked Christmas, Easter, St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Mardi Gras, but the fact remains that this is not a movable feast made for the convenience of secular celebrators! Please stop tramping upon our Catholic feastdays and turning them into meaningless secular celebrations! Is there no end to this ignornace?"

Thank you very much for that, Fred, and you remind me of something. I have always wanted to hijack the Feast Day of St. Louis. Why not? Our city is named after him. We ought to be able to declare a holiday in his honor. It would be just for people in the St. Louis region. Think about that. Our own holiday. His feast day is Aug. 25. Why not make it the third Monday in August? That gives us something between July 4 and Labor Day. We could make toasted ravioli the official dish.

Sadly, there is little chance that the region's leadership will jump on this. Regular readers might remember my long campaign to make Summer Solstice a holiday. We would kick off the celebration at Cahokia Mounds, our region's most underappreciated asset. We would gather around Woodhenge at dawn. Part of that plan to mark the beginning of summer was connected with my idea to encourage men to wear shorts in the summer. That idea fluttered around for a while and then died.

In a similar manner, one of my few sorties into national politics came to naught. Earlier this year, I suggested that we repeal the Former Presidents Act. That particular law was passed in 1955 because Congress was worried about Harry Truman. He had refused to cash in on his status as a former president. Congress thought it unseemly for a former president to be scuffling along.

So Congress decided to give former presidents a pension and expense money.

That has grown out of control. Last year, we spent nearly $3.7 million on former presidents. That doesn't count Secret Service protection or their subsidized medical treatment. Mostly, it covers their pensions and their staff and their office expenses.

None of them need our money. These days, former presidents are money-making machines. So are their wives. They make millions writing books and giving speeches.

This would be a perfect time to repeal the Act. We have four living ex-presidents -- two Republican and two Democrats.

Because the whole thing started with Truman, I thought it would be perfect symmetry for Missourians to end it. I appealed to Sens. Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt and Reps. Lacy Clay and Ann Wagner to sponsor legislation to repeal the Act. We could give the country a lesson in bipartisanship.

But none of them agreed to step forward. Washington has become dysfunctional.

That's why I suggested we become two countries. North and South. St. Louis, a blue dot in a red state, could secede to Illinois and become West East St. Louis.

One reader liked that idea and suggested the North then invade Canada and surrender. We'd finally have national health insurance.

What's more, Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October.

___

(c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services