I know, you’ve been watching all month to see what the holiday for October would be, but what could I do? This is the day it was set for. But you may be glad you waited, because October 31st is (among other things, apparently,) International I Need Some More Time Day, the day when we’re permitted to catch up on everything that’s been getting behind. To that end, today is actually 48 hours long – to all celebrants, November 1st does not start until, you know, November 2nd to the outside world. Yes, we’ve gained an extra day in the calendar, kinda – not really, because there’s still 365.2422 days in a year, but one of them is now twice as long.
It sounds like it could cause a lot of confusion, but really, the date is just a matter of semantics, isn’t it? We’re the only living species (well, except for blue-footed boobies) that appends an actual title to any given daylight period, or rotation of the Earth, or whatever you want to call it, so we can change it at will. Hell, there are periods in our past history when months and even years just disappeared because someone wanted to clean things up – no, not in the erasing history sense, but in the, “Dammit, this calendar keeps getting all fershlugina,” way.
If, for instance, some supervisor at work or professor at school starts giving you grief over this, claiming that “it’s not actually a holiday” or something whiney like that, first off, point them right to this post – that should be all the authority you need. But you can also remind them that they’re stupid enough to do this whole ‘Daylight Saving’ clock-switching horseshit, so how is this More Time Day any worse? And just think about how much it’ll help with deadlines and tight schedules. Seriously, we’ve needed this holiday for a while.
So, go ahead and check out two sunrises for today. Put off that mortgage payment for another 24 hours. Get your homework done and finish that TV series you have on videotape (people still do that, right?) When someone says, “You never fed the dog today,” remind them, “The day ain’t over yet.” Sit back and gawk at Miss October just a bit longer. We’ve earned it.