10 Made-Up Holidays to Celebrate This Year

It’s been a rough year. Infuse your calendar with things you can look forward to.

Sophie Lucido Johnson
Human Parts

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All illustrations and photos by Sophie Lucido Johnson.

My favorite book is a children’s book by Byrd Baylor called I’m in Charge of Celebrations. It is a perfect book, and if you don’t have it or haven’t read it, please do yourself a favor and buy a copy right now. It makes a great present for any adult and for most children, so you won’t regret the purchase, and it’s only available in paperback, so it’s cheaper than a burrito.

The premise of the book is that the narrator lives in the desert, and she doesn’t celebrate regular holidays. Instead, she gets to choose her own holidays, and she chooses a LOT. She celebrates the day she saw a coyote and the day the clouds looked like green parrots. (And a lot of other days, but I do not want to spoil this book for you, and like I said, you have to read it.)

I am also a big fan of celebrating things that other people don’t celebrate. There are lots of reasons to spread out your celebrations. First, if you decide to celebrate Groundhog Day with more pomp and particularity than Christmas, you will avoid expensive plane tickets and crowded holiday shopping catastrophes. Second, celebrating new stuff that you’ve never celebrated before takes some of the pressure off holidays, which we tend to build up…

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