It looks like we have:
- Christmasy - New yearsy period, approximately from the middle of November to the middle of January; a time to get into the chearfull shopping mood and remember why you left the people who you left, buying them appropriate gifts.
- Valentinesy period, approximately from the middle of January to the middle of February; depending on whateher you're with someone can be cheerfull or awfully depressing.
- Pre-Easter hiatus, from the middle of February to sometime around the middle of March; time to relax a bit before the next big feast.
- Eastertime, sometime from the middle of March to the Middle of April (depends, of course, on the date of the Easter) - a "bland" sort of holiday, mearly seems to be there to fill the time between others - children are probably the happiest portion of the population.
- Expecting-the-summer-time, middle of April to July; the time to make plans for the next summer. This actually looks like the largest period of "nothing happening" - I'm sure it will be filled in the next 100 years.
- Summertime, which can, depending on geography and culture, last until September or October; people who can, pretend they don't work and try to utilize a vacation place with fancy geography.
- Halloween-time, from around the middle of October to the start of November; usually fun.
Not that I'm against such a pratice - life would definitely be more depressing without such distractions. And of course, different countries, nations and religions might plug in their specific holidays, but the ones I've enumberated seem to be more-or-less universal in the western world.
But anyway, it still bothers me as meaningless and shallow entertainment...
#1 Re: Seasonitis
There are some big problems with a lot of the major holidays: They all stem from usurpal and overcommercialisation.
Every year, the preparation for Christmas starts earlier, it seems. I was convinced that when the decorations and the (volume knob on the) music for Christmas were on duty as of the first of November, they were decorating for the 2010 season.
The majority of the "holidays" are candy holidays, usurped from their non-Christian roots:
Christmas usurped the Winter Solstice.
Valentine's Day -- and to an extent Groundhog Day -- usurped Imbolc.
Easter was wholesale stolen - not even the name was really changed.
Hallowe'en was dressed up with the trappings of "kidfest" and relegated to the "castrated, thus harmless" category.
They have yet to steal Beltaine (May 1) and Lughnassaidh (Aug 2), but then nobody else pays attention to them.
The commercialization, though, of the remainder really bothers me.
And the text window on this blog irritates the hell out of me because it insists on putting the bottom border of itself RIGHT UP AGAINST the status line of Mozilla -- if I adjust it to centre screen and start typing, *bam!* back it goes.