ID9

i never quite got the hang of holiday economics. not that i don't understand the pragmatism of it. just that the demarcation of time being an artificial construct anyway--a fact that i'm fully aware can be used to argue either way, just so you know--it's the *specificity* of holidays--that *particular* combination of day/month/year especially in terms of documented historical events that actually took place on said particular day/month/year--that keeps them from being arbitrary excuses to have a day off work. in that sense, holiday economics undercuts both the letter and the spirit of the 'law' of holidays; all right for holidays that don't really commemorate an 'exact location' in our artificially demarcated timeline, but it subverts the essential orderliness of history. might as well say, oh i don't know when it happen, just that it did; might as well have your holiday on any old day; might as well take all the holidays, lump them together, have One Grand Uberholiday instead of several little ones, do away with the lot all in one day, one week, one month (which, as we've seen in the Office, is never as good an idea as you might think); might as well not have holidays at all. anyway, who says holidays need to be celebrated as holidays?

the way i see it, the Inquirer has got it exactly right.

edit to add: see the Philippine Declaration of Independence here, as posted by E. Cross Saltire on his wonderfully informative (when he's in the mood) Nontrivial Pursuit. (find him on multiply here.)