Many years ago, I decided that if ethnic groups and other minorities could have their own holidays, so could individual people, i.e., me. So I declared the holiday of Coynezaa, a six-day revel extending from Christmas through my birthday (Dec. 30). (Curiously, this holiday always coincides with other people’s festivities.) And when I visit friends, I surreptitiously enter the holiday on their calendars, also adding a note in late November that Coynezaa is coming up in a month, so perhaps they should be buying presents now. (The idea, of course, is that, like Chanukah, Coynezaa presents should be bestowed every day during the entire holiday.) Sometimes this importuning even works!
I don’t think it’s gonna work this year, but here are a couple of photographic gifts from our readers, which I tender with hopes that all readers have a happy Coynezaa.
Photographer Cameron Way has contributed this image to celebrate the season. Click to enlarge for maximum LOLz.
We follow your blog and I heard you were looking for a Last Noms image. I’ve created one. The cat in the middle is ours and so are two others.
Here’s a photo contributed by reader John Danley (go here if you don’t understand what this is about):
You can keep your Coynezaa. I prefer Billszaa, preferably 20’s and larger. Just send them here to the Anderosa.
Ha!
Many a christmas eve this atheist goy went to a Chinese restaurant with Jewish friends.
Merry Coynezaa everyone! 🙂
And a happy zoo year, too.
Happy Coynezaa then, Jerry!
And many, many thanks for making WEIT such a vibrant site, day after day.
For the Chinese menu, may I suggest No. 42:
gefilte fish à la Szechuan with fried rice latkes.
We are dropping out of acknowledging holidays or any other ideologies designed to feed soothing emotions and drive buying stuff.
My sister-in-law is looking to rent a townhone in NoVA and she managed to find several Indian real estate agents to show her houses this morning! She also found several Indian restaurants open today. Being open for christmas is not just a chinese thing, but a chindian thing.
Thankfully, all the gas stations in my area are owned by Pakistani Americans, so my son could get his highly caffeinated energy drinks today. But I’m assuming that even christians would keep gas stations open, profit being profit (or perhaps laws require them to be open even if groceries stores are closed, because gas is more important than food).
Laws that dictate that certain retail premises MUST be open on certain days? good grief, what sort of dictatorship do you live in? That’s scary!
We do have arrangements to guarantee that several pharmacies are open in town for at least part of major national holidays – but that’s something arranged locally, between (say) all the pharmacies on the north side of town, another consortium in the centre, another in the west end … and there seems to be a voluntary rota, because it’s not the same pharmacies every holiday. And that’s a very different thing from “laws requiring them to be open”.
Come to think of it, many grocery stores are open too : though I’ve been away at work abroad for I-don’t-remember-how-many of the last few Xmases, I do recall having shops to get bread and milk in, and pubs to get beer in, on the day. Or am I just lucky for living in “the most ungodly city in Britain”?
(I do wish there were a “Preview” option on this wordpress!)
I think we should have a long holiday that begins each year on the Winter Solstice (generally December 21 or 22), extends through December 25, and ends on January 1, in commemoration of the fact that all three holidays celebrate exactly the same astronomical event.
Been without WEIT for 4 days here in Norfolk as I mislaid my USB dongle (got a new one!) & then I read this – hilarious! I love that second picture!
Merry Coynezaa to you all! I am celebrating the old Germanic ‘Yule Girth’ – fro 18th December to 7th January. The main effect is to increase the girth!
Just reading yesterday’s Guardian –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/24/christmas-atheists
I don’t know the “correct” observance phrase for Coynezaa, so I will go with my gut and wish upon every a very Jockularitified Coynezaa.
Credenza: noun – one who turns his life over to reason and takes a degree in science for his/her belief in the power of Coynezaa.
Not to be confused witb a Credenza Apologist, which is essentially a parent who tries to explain on his/her IRS documentation why it’s a write-off.
Or a Credenza Accomodationist, the vilest of all people: one who took a science education for other reasons, but argues that belief in Credenza is still a noble pathway to a productive science career. (Needs work!)
Enjoy your well earned break, and I can’t resist but also wish you a Merry Hitchmas.
I don’t know what the problem is about today (Dec. 25). There were basketball games all day (some on cable chs.) and a football game at night. Of course, this doesn’t happen every year so you might consider celebrating Newton’s birthday. He’s the only famous person I know born on Dec. 25. Besides, he gave us the greatest gift of all–gravity. Without that, we’d all be spaced out.
Happy whatever.
http://ymlp.com/zV9nnc
(Hope that works!)
So, does Coynezaa have manly feats of strength?
Is there a calender file for the various “personal holidays”.
I don’t know much about how this is meant to work, but I believe that there is at least one “standard” way of doing this. Probably, there are several, mutually incompatible, “standards” to navigate. The system that I tinkered with some time ago produces files like this :
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:Blah
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Blah
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London
X-WR-CALDESC:List of trips for GSAC for 2012 - tentative.
END:VCALENDAR
Does anyone who actually understands or uses this stuff, know if it would be possible (let alone useful/ amusing/ interesting) to create a shareable calendar of (say) 365.25 prominent Gnu Athiest’s birthdays, distributed evenly through the year? Leap years included.
Getting it to fill the year would probably need to be a collaborative effort ; I can see my brain melting if I tried to do more than (say) a week myself.
OK, non-previewing WordPress ; now I know that the [code][/code] HTML element works as hoped.
No it didn’t ; it just tricked me into thinking so.
Wow, sweet job on the Last Noms, Cameron!
RE the second image: On first moving to Kalamazoo, my husband & I went out to dinner with one of his colleagues & family. Said colleague was overtly Jewish (i.e., it came up in his conversation a lot). As we were at a Chinese restaurant, we all chose to order entrees to share with everyone else. Imagine my dismay when said colleague stated, “we can eat anything but pork and shellfish.” (My two fav dishes, at the time, being Moo Shu Pork & Szechuan Shrimp…)