Holidays

On his first day in office, President Trump signed executive orders to end DEI. Schoolchildren nationwide know that he has failed to deliver, for every June they must participate in the celebration of a federal holiday that only entered the national consciousness thanks to endorsements from ACLU radicals and Big Business eager to make a buck. Ever since Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck in 2020, the children’s art instructor has forced them to write paeans to a petulant overweight drunk. I’m speaking, of course, of Father’s Day. Father’s Day began in Washington State as a church service orchestrated by Sonora Smart Dodd, an adoring daughter who wanted to honor Dad for not falling to pieces when Mom died.

If you’re hesitant to ask someone if they are American or Canadian — the latter are often offended to be mistaken for the former — ask them instead about their favorite holiday. It isn’t a foolproof method, but if they say Halloween then you know you’re talking to an American. No other nationality would choose it — because no one else gets it so right. The origins of All Hallows’ Eve belong to Ireland and Scotland. The Celtic festival Samhain was not only a huge feast to mark the start of winter: it was a day full of superstitious activity, which included bonfires to clear the air of ghosts and sacrifices to appease anything all-powerful that might curse food supplies during the dark months.

Thirty feet in the air off a northern Canadian highway stands the giant Vegreville Easter egg, rotating gently in the wind. The egg is eighteen feet wide, nearly twenty-five long and designed to turn with the breeze like a weathervane. It is decorated in a traditional Ukrainian pysanka pattern with thousands of gold, black and white aluminum triangles, for the egg is an homage to the Ukrainian immigrants who settled the area long ago. It is a technical feat: the tile- cutting technology developed to produce the mosaic on the egg’s curved surface was later used to tile the exterior of the Space Shuttle. Whatever day of the year you may spy it, it is undeniably an Easter egg.

Two Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee have introduced a bill that, if passed, would make the day after the Super Bowl a statewide holiday. The initial version of the bill also proposed removing Columbus Day as a holiday. With Republicans dominating the state legislature, two Democrats offering a popular, seemingly apolitical holiday in exchange for eliminating a more controversial, clearly politicized one was unlikely to fly. So it's unsurprising they've dropped that stipulation. The idea of a holiday the day after the Super Bowl has been a pipe dream for NFL fans for almost as long as the Super Bowl has existed, and the subject comes up just about every year around this time.

As one of eight children, I feel deep kinship with others who come from big families. Bunk beds, hand-me-down clothes, abject chaos at dinnertime — these are the staples of big-family life. Tieghan Gerard, the author of the food blog and cookbook series Half Baked Harvest, is one such kindred spirit. She comes from a family of ten, and began cooking as a tween to help with frenzied mealtimes. She soon started creating her own recipes for a food blog, which became three bestselling cookbooks and a four-million-follower Instagram. Her big-family backstory blends with her wholesome, rustic aesthetic: feeding a crowd, after all, involves creativity, resourcefulness and well-loved tools. I hoped I’d recognize some high-volume cooking tricks in Half Baked Harvest: Super Simple.