Silly Holidays Contest

On February 2, when I was sitting around in the teachers’ room with one of the cool English teachers, I mentioned that today was a holiday in America. Part of my job is explaining snippets of my culture, y'know.

“Really? What holiday?”

I felt a tinge of regret.

“Okay…so…there’s this little furry animal, a groundhog, that lives…uh, underground…”

He seemed to know what a groundhog was (surely aided by my brilliant description); he had not, however, seen the movie. Perhaps I should have spared him the lesson, as we are all aware of the absurdity this “holiday” comes down to: a large rodent predicting weather patterns. Then again, the tradition has been mentioned in olde Scottish poetry, and has American significance dating back to German-American Candlemas celebrations of the 1800’s. And it is a little entertainment in the bleak midwinter. I suppose it would be a shame to deny Jimmy the Groundhog of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin his annual moment of glory.

When finally complete, my explanation was better-received than I’d anticipated. Maybe because we all have our silly holidays.

Setsubun, February 3, is a Japanese celebration to welcome spring, but involves some ridiculousness of its own. Due to its correlation with the Lunar New Year, this holiday is a time to bid the old adieu and ring in the new…and what better way to accomplish this than by making someone dress up like a demon, and then throwing things at him/her!Someone in the family plays the oni, the demon: basic paperboard masks readily available at local grocery stores, if you don’t have a more elaborate papier-mache one. They’re found next to the display of fukumame—roasted soybeans in plastic packages, all set to be torn open and thrown. The main event, mamemaki, or the throwing of beans at the oni, is accompanied by chants of “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” which translates as “Out with the demons! Good luck, come in!” If no one agrees to be the oni, tossing the beans out the door apparently has the same effect.

Along with the throwing of beans, many students told me they ate a number of beans equal to their age, plus one more for good luck in the upcoming year. And for school lunch the next day, we all got a little package of fukumame-nut mix.

There you have it, parents: if you want your kids to eat their vegetables, just tell them demons will come into the house if they don’t.