How To Invent A Holiday

November 27, 2024·26 min·2 clips

Simone imagines attending the 1906 opening of Cinema Omnia Pate, the world's first permanent movie theater in Paris.

The episode opens with the story of Tom Roy, a former radio host who discovered he could submit holidays to Chase's Calendar of Events and ended up creating 90 unofficial holidays over several decades. Roy explains he started in the mid-1980s when he found a submission form in the back of the calendar and his first entry, Northern Hemisphere Hoodie Hoo Day, was printed, prompting him to submit more. His wife eventually told him to stop, ending his prolific run. Inspired by Tom's approach, the Not Past It team proposes four new holidays for December 1st, each tied to a real historical event. The first pitch is International Pate Day, commemorating the opening of Cinema Omnia Pate in Paris on December 1st, 1906, one of the first permanent movie theaters. Charles Pate and his brothers had transitioned from selling phonographs to filmmaking after encountering the Lumiere brothers' Cinematograph technology, and the Pate company still distributes films today. The second proposal is The Curse Heard Around the World Day, marking December 1st, 1976, when the Sex Pistols appeared on the British TV show Today as a last-minute replacement for Queen. Host Bill Grundy provoked guitarist Steve Jones into swearing on live national television, generating tabloid outrage and effectively introducing punk rock to mainstream British culture overnight. The third pitch is Life is a Highway Day, honoring the December 1st, 1913 opening of the first drive-up gas station in Pittsburgh. Before this innovation, drivers had to buy gasoline by the can at pharmacies, general stores, or blacksmiths and pour it into their tanks with a funnel. The station offered free air, water, and road maps, laying the groundwork for American car culture. The final and most personal proposal is National Baldwin to Berry Day, honoring James Baldwin, who died on December 1st, 1987. Producer Ramoy Phillip traces Baldwin's influence from the short story Sonny's Blues through his self-imposed exile to Paris in the 1940s, where he found his voice as a writer. The segment draws a line from Baldwin's work to filmmaker Barry Jenkins, who cited Giovanni's Room as his first encounter with queer literature, and to President Barack Obama, who has repeatedly cited Baldwin as formative reading. The episode concludes with the observation that holidays are ultimately just markers for the things people care enough about to keep commemorating.

As heard by us

A brisk look at how a joke holiday can end up feeling official.

Tom Roy turns a throwaway joke into a run of holidays, which is funnier than it should be. The episode traces how the made-up days grew out of Chase's Calendar of Events and a radio host's habit of sending in his own ideas until the whole thing took on a life of its own.

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Press play if you want the strange origin story behind the silly holidays you have probably seen online.

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