[Note to the humor-impaired: This post is all tongue-in-cheek.]

We just got the official District 150 school calendar. Now I know we haven’t had “Christmas Vacation” for a long time now. I understand the religious sensitivities that led to changing it to “Winter Vacation.”

Nevertheless, the calendar has nearly every conceivable religious and non-religious observance listed on it. There’s “Islamic Ramadan” (Aug. 11), “Jewish Rosh Hashanah” (Sept. 9), “Patriot Day” (Sept. 11), “Leif Erickson Day” (Oct. 9), “All Saints’ Day” (Nov. 1), “Groundhog Day” (Feb. 2), “Chinese New Year” (Feb. 3), and even “Dr. Suess Birthday” (Mar. 2). “Palm Sunday” and “Easter” (Apr. 17 & 24) are listed, as well as “Jewish Pesach” (Apr. 19-25).

But what holiday is printed on December 25? “National Children’s Day.”

National Children’s Day?

What’s even more strange is that this particular holiday is printed twice on the calendar — once on Dec. 25, and once on Oct. 8. Any holiday that’s celebrated twice a year must be something special. So I Googled “National Children’s Day” to find out more about it. It has its own official site, naturally: http://www.nationalchildrensday.us/. It even has an official song (“I Love Being a Kid” by a guy who calls himself “Mr. Nicky”). However, the site says it’s celebrated on the second Sunday in June. (I checked the school calendar to see if perhaps “Christmas” got printed on June 12. Nope.) So, District 150 put this holiday on their calendar twice and were wrong both times?

I had to investigate further, so I checked out Wikipedia. (I know Wikipedia is reliable because I looked up “Reliability of Wikipedia” on Wikipedia, and it said it was reliable.) The Children’s Day entry explained that this holiday “is celebrated on various days in many places around the world, in particular to honor children.” I’m glad they added that last part, because I was wondering who, in particular, was being honored on Children’s Day. It appears the holiday was aptly named. “Major global variants include an International Children’s Day on June 1 as adopted in the former Communist bloc, and a Universal Children’s Day on November 20, by United Nations recommendation.” (This was established during the height of the Cold War, so the adjectival escalation should come as no shock; I’m surprised Khrushchev didn’t counter with a Multiversal Children’s Day.) So far, still no Oct. 8 or Dec. 25. But wait: “Many nations declare days for children on other dates.”

Next, all the countries are listed with their various dates for celebrating Children’s Day. Searching through them, I did discover that Children’s Day is celebrated on Oct. 8 in one country: Iran. Well, the U.S. did celebrate Children’s Day on Oct. 8 one year. “Children’s Day was proclaimed by President Bill Clinton to be held on October 8, 2000.” However the next year, in a show of partisan eye-poking, newly-elected President Bush officially moved it to the first Sunday in June. My guess is he thought the kids would have more fun if the could celebrate their day at the beginning of summer vacation. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, ever the non-conformist, “issued a proclamation proclaiming the second Sunday in June as Children’s Day…” [emphasis added]. Well, that will show the federal government they can’t push our state around! We’ll just have our Children’s Day on the second Sunday of June and see if Obama tries to stop us.

Getting back to Christmas, there are some countries that celebrate Children’s Day on December 25, according to Wikipedia. They’re all in central Africa: “In Congo, Congo DR, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic, São Tomé and Príncipe Children’s Day is celebrated on December 25 to honour all the children there.” But how many countries celebrate Christmas on December 25? Just about all of them. Even Orthodox churches that celebrate Christmas in January by the Gregorian calendar are actually celebrating on December 25 on the Julian calendar.

Finally, I decided to get an authoritative answer instead of all this Wikipedia stuff. I asked District 150 board member Laura Petelle why District 150 didn’t print Christmas on their calendar. Her answer: “I am forced to assume typo.”

Oh, sure, give the obvious answer! 🙂