Just because you aren’t living in a sitcom or cartoon doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the many stupid fictional holidays celebrated by your favorite fictional families. Here are a few of the many great holidays that have been created by television writers (and one musician) throughout the years that we should actually start celebrating right away.
Refrigerator Day
What it is: The Dinosaur’s version of a combination between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Refrigerator Day celebrates the dinosaur discovery of a refrigerator, which allowed them to settle down and start families rather than continually roaming in a search for food. To celebrate, the dinosaurs perform a pageant of the first refrigerator day, give gifts to one another, put up festive decorations and enjoy refrigerator carols that are more like commercials for goods and services. Prior to Refrigerator day, everyone is asked to fast for two days.
How to celebrate: We may not be dinosaurs, but we too appreciate the value of a fine refrigerator. Try fasting from refrigerated or frozen foods for two days before the celebration, eating only dehydrated, canned or totally fresh from the farm foods. Since we already have Christmas, don’t go run to the stores to grab expensive presents for your loved ones –instead, give them some great refrigerator artwork or new magnets.
Source: Muppet Wiki
Treat Yo Self Day
What it is: In Parks and Recreation, only Tom Haverford and Donna Meagle celebrate Treat Yo Self Day, but it sounds delightful. Essentially, once a year the duo treats themselves to clothes, fragrances, massages, mimosas, fine leather goods, Batman costumes or any other thing they so please.
How to celebrate: The key is in the name, my friend. Do something you’ve always wanted to do, despite the cost. Or just splurge on a luxury you tend to deny yourself. Go on a river cruise, enjoy a lobster dinner, pay someone to give you a piggyback all day –whatever you want, just Treat Yo Self.
Source: Movie Web
Whacking Day
What it is: Modern Whacking Day in The Simpsons involves chasing all of the town’s snakes into the center of town and then beating them to death. Fortunately, the episode involves Barry White and Lisa saving the snakes so we didn’t have to watch a bloodbath –especially after Bart reveals the holiday was originally created in 1924 as an excuse to beat up the town’s Irish population.
How to celebrate: Let’s celebrate Lisa’s lead on this one and not celebrate it –especially the original version of the holiday. If you really feel like you need to pick on some snakes, maybe try visiting a rattlesnake rodeo in the Southwest. If you’re just looking for something snake-related to do on May 10 to celebrate your love of The Simpsons, try making snake-shaped foods, biting the heads off of gummy snakes and terrifying people with rubber snakes before beating them…then everyone wins.
Source: Simpsons Wiki
Weasel Stomping Day
What it is: There’s just something about killing small animals that makes people want to create imaginary holidays. Weird Al created Weasel Stomping Day for his song of the same name. To celebrate, people spread mayonnaise on their lawns, put on Viking helmets and stomp weasels to death.
How to celebrate: Like Whacking Day, you really shouldn’t follow the directions provided in the original source to celebrate this holiday. Go ahead and spread mayonnaise on your lawn (be prepared for a barrage of nasty pests and pets heading to your front yard to lick it all up) and wear a Viking helmet, but try not to crush any weasels. Instead, try making a weasel piñata and smashing it to pieces or paint a soccer ball with a weasel so you can kick the hell out of a weasel in an animal-friendly kind of way.
Source: Wikipedia
Festivus
What it is: Chances are you already are familiar with the anti-commercialism Christmas holiday made popular by Seinfeld, but just in case you weren’t, here goes. Essentially, Festivus is a secular backlash against the commercialism of Christmas and involves setting up a metal pole in your living room. You then practice the “air of grievances” by telling everyone there what is wrong with them and then enjoy dinner. Whenever anything remotely good happens, label it a “Festivus miracle.” Before the evening commences, someone must complete the “Feats of Strength” by pinning the head of the household in a wrestling match. Festivus cannot end until the Feats of Strength is over.
How to celebrate: It’s worth noting that while Festivus was popularized by Seinfeld, it has actually been practiced by Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe’s family sometime between February and May since 1966. Seinfeld set the official date of the holiday as December 23 and since then, people around the globe have started holding Festivus in their own home.
If you want to join in the festivities, it’s pretty easy. Put an aluminum “Festivus Pole” up in your living room, eat a nice dinner, air your grievances and then practice the feats of strength. Just don’t forget to follow Kramer’s lead and label tons of events as Festivus miracles throughout the night.
Source: Wikipedia
Merlinpeen
What it is: Granted, this one is fictional even in the world of 30 Rock, but the celebration itself doesn’t sound all that bad. According to those who use their belief in Verdukianism as an excuse to get out of the company’s Secret Santa exchange, Merlinpeen (also known as the Holiday of Mouth Pleasures), involves eating meat-lover’s pizza, drinking root beer and having your teeth gently flossed by a blonde virgin. The holiday icon of this holy holiday is a bowl of meat cubes with a picture of Jimmy Connors sticking out of it.
How to celebrate: Let’s follow this one to the letter; enjoy pizza, root beer and getting your teeth flossed by a blonde virgin (if you don’t know any, just floss each other’s teach). And be sure to celebrate with a large bowl of meat cubes with Jimmy Connors’ picture in it, making sure to finish the meat cubes before the festivities end.
Sources: Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary
If you’ve ever complained about not having enough good holidays to celebrate, especially in the summer, then get working on these! I for one particularly want to try Treat Yo Self Day because I’m generally a pretty frugal person. What about you, do any of these particularly appeal to you?
In my own house, we celebrate Derpy Day, but that's not really a fictional holiday.
That would be a great article idea for December though.