Inventing the holidays
For decades, Chase’s Calendar of Events has served as an authoritative reference guide to holidays, anniversaries, and miscellaneous special events. Published by McGraw-Hill, it’s got entries for everything from Flag Day and Washington’s birthday to National Horseradish Month.
If you’d like to see a particular event included the book, simply fill out an online form, and the editors will consider it. There are no guarantees, however. According to a New York Times article last May, “An organization has to agree to sponsor the holiday, or there has to be some sort of ongoing promotion or tangible enthusiasm for it.” You can’t get too greedy, either: the National Confectioners Association, for example, currently recognizes four separate chocolate holidays. “As a consequence, I won’t have that in the book,” explains Holly McGuire, the book’s editor. “If they’re not taking a stand, then I’m not going to.”
Yesterday marked Chase’s 50th anniversary. According to the McGraw-Hill website, the first edition (for the year 1958) was 32 pages long, contained 364 entries, and sold for $1. Next year’s edition, by contrast, runs some 750 pages long, contains more than 12,500 entries, and sells for almost $65 on Amazon.com.
