Cinco de Mayo is almost upon us again. First, the adult beverage manufacturers and bars co-opted Halloween. St Patrick’s Day gets bigger and drunker every year. This year Cinco de Mayo and the Kentucky Derby share the weekend, with mint juleps, KFC and buckets of Corona.
For those who don’t know, Cinco de Mayo is a holiday based, very loosely, on the French defeat at the battle of Puebla. Napoleon III, also famous for recording the much beloved song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”, dispatched an army in support of Emperor Maximilian Shell, noted actor and Hapsburg Archduke. The outmatched Poblanos defeated them just outside of Puebla, and some 130 odd years later, an American national holiday featuring Taco Bell Cool Ranch Dorito tacos and mediocre Mexican beers stuffed with limes was born.
This got me to thinking - what if every time the French lost a major battle, we had a holiday? We could end hunger and sobriety as we know it!
I’ll start with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. This was actually a long fought battle, that lasted from March 13 until May 7, and effectively ended French “participation” in Vietnam. This gives us an advantage of either picking any day in that time frame, or tag teaming it on to follow shortly on the heals of Cinco de Mayo. Festivities could include delicious, steaming bowls of pho, tasty banh mi sandwiches, and iced coffee. We might need to add alcohol into the coffee to get the alcoholic beverages companies behind it, or try to make 33 Export popular. Probably shorten the name to the more simple DBP Day to make it more marketable.
Please feel free to add other famous French battle losses and your suggestions for how to commercialize them.
There’s a bar in Palm Harbor, FL, that is celebrating the Derby with “mint juleps and fried chicken”. I have been to the Derby at Churchill Downs a couple of times, and don’t recall anyone eating fried chicken. Hot brown, yes. Derby Pie. Yes. Chicken, no. Maybe I just don’t remember properly, but the only thing I can think of is them conflating Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Kentucky Derby.
I think barbecued thoroughbred is a swell counter to their offer.
The Battle of Mers-el-Kébir, where the French Fleet was attacked by the British for reasons that involved a basic lack of trust. We could celebrate by enjoying traditional British dishes such as Chicken Tikka Masala, Doner kebab and mushy peas, washed down with pints of Blackthorn cider while launching surprise aerial attacks on the neighbor’s cat with bottle rockets and M-80s.
I think Star Wars Day is a much better reason for a holiday than the anniversary of some dumb French battle. Let’s see what other things we can celebrate, preferably with booze-filled parties.
June 23 – first birth-control pill approved for U.S. use.
October 29 – first ARPA link established between UCLA and Stanford, the birth of the Internet.
May 9 – entrepreneur Gary Kremen registered sex.com, setting off a continuing effort to find creative and original names for pr0n websites.
December 5 – 22nd Amendment to the Constitution ratified, ending Prohibition.
May 25th is Lilac Day, to support research into Alzheimer’s Disease. Towel Day is also celebrated every year on 25 May as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans.
Great thread idea and I have actually thought about this before. In part because I have travelled a lot and been able to participate in some very fun celebrations of other cultures, and, in part, because my country is so multicultural, which I think is wicked awesome, of course!
I propose a rotating, random holiday. Let me explain, we simply cannot enshrine every culture’s holidays or we’ll never get to work. But we could put all the possibilities into a hat and pull one each year.
The culture will be a tad highlighted all year, we will all get a lesson in another holiday’s significance. Of course, there will be food, right? Dancing maybe, parades, crafts, lights, sometimes drink, etc., what’s not to love about extra celebrations?
A random ever changing holiday each year. Be a outsider and just enjoy an extra day off, or follow along and join in!
I want Mardi Gas, and Songkran, and Cinco de mayo, and Nepi, Hari Raya, etc, etc.
Sept 13 would celebrate the battle of the Plains of Abraham (1775), in which France was effectively kicked out of North America, having lost Louisiana to Spain in 1763. LA did revert to France in 1801, but was soon sold to the US.
Would make a great addition to Agincourt and Waterloo.
May 6 is Andreas Baader’s birthday. There might be some holiday potential there but I don’t know because I swear I was all the way across town and I really didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt and how did I know it would go off?
