Happy Family Day

So tomorrow, three provinces in our great country will be celebrating something called Family Day. It's a new holiday, only three years old in Ontario. Although it is ostensibly billed as a day to be engaged with one's loved ones, Family Day was instituted as an excuse to have a stat day in February. For me, it means a blessed day off work, and yes, I'll be spending it with family.

I'm all for a day off work. Heck, I've already cashed in on the motherlode, the elusive Snow Day (I'm still coming down from that one!). But what perplexes me is why we needed to come up with Family Day in the first place. Couldn't we have built a holiday around an existing one, the ever so meaningful Groundhog Day? After all, Groundhog Day has everything. It has a mascot that can be used as a cute fellow for merchandising. There are nice little rituals that have been built around it, and the good thing is that by 8:00 a.m., it's all over, so we could have the rest of the day to play. It would be a cinch to design some cutesy greeting cards (Don't be afraid of your shadow, Let me be your sunshine...or.... Winter be damned! Put a Spring in your step). For the cinephiles, the definitive holiday movie already exists (and while I'm on this, I would like to mention that this was the second year in a row that Groundhog Day was not aired on TV this past Groundhog Day, and it really pissed me off), so that has been taken care of. Given all of the possibilities to tack on to an existing day, why do we need Family Day?

The strange thing is, I never question the other Days. Valentine's Day is cool. I like that one. St. Patrick's day is fun even though I'm neither Irish nor do I have a need to drink green beer. Mother's Day and Father's Day work for me as well. Labour Day, not so much, because all I do on Labour Day is think about work. But Family Day? Isn't the "Sabbath Day" (choose your day of observance depending upon your religion) meant to be a day to be with family? According to my calculations, that's supposed to be weekly! Are we now deciding that the importance of the family be acknowledged merely once a year, and in only some provinces?

Of course, the next question is, in this day and age, what is the definition of family? The nuclear family as I knew it growing up is quite rare nowadays. There are single families, blended families and who knows what other permutations (wow Hallmark, think of the possibilities!). When it comes to adults, there are parents, in-laws, step parents, grandparents, step grandparents and step in-laws--sometimes in multiples. How does one celebrate when there are so many people involved? One group for lunch and another for dinner?

At school, I am cognisant of the fact that my students don't necessarily fall under the children of two parent family category. Mother's Day and Father's Day is so stressful that for years, we decided not to celebrate them at school, because it was too upsetting for some. The more I think about it, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe it is precisely because the nuclear family isn't necessarily the norm anymore that Family Day is not such a bad idea. Maybe it's a really good thing.

Family Day, therefore, is a period of 24 hours in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, where no matter who the players are, no matter how strange or different or unorthodox or how magnificent the combination of people who live under one roof might be to others in the world, we are able to celebrate with our unique family unit. That's pretty cool.

Now all we need is a cute little mascot, some Hallmark cards and a holiday movie!
Whether or not tomorrow is a designated holiday where you live, take a moment to marvel at the uniqueness of your family. And then have a piece of cake.
Happy Family Day to all!