{"id":2759,"date":"2023-06-05T22:33:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T06:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=2759"},"modified":"2023-06-05T22:33:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T06:33:57","slug":"birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2023\/06\/05\/birthdays\/","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I\u2019m late because <\/span><\/span>I went to an (online) con<\/span><\/span>vention<\/span><\/span> in New Zealand over the weekend, and had meetings most of yesterday and an excellent b<\/span><\/span>ut<\/span><\/span> long meeting today. <\/span><\/span>Everyone\u2019s trying to get all kinds of things done because it\u2019s a long weekend next weekend. Last weekend was a long weekend in New Zealand, which is why they held the convention. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a long weekend that the US is unlikely to ever want to celebrate. How can I say this with such certainty? It\u2019s called the King\u2019s Birthday and for a long time it was called the Queen\u2019s Birthday). It\u2019s the birthday of neither. It\u2019s an ancestral date that was picked to celebrate the birthday of the monarch of the UK and the Commonwealth. The UK celebrates it at a different time of year and, I was told recently, no longer get a day off for it. Australia doesn\u2019t have a date so much as a day: it\u2019s the second Monday in June. Since the date changes, it\u2019s a symbolic birthday, not an actual one.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mind you, a century and a bit ago migrants who knew their birthday by the Jewish calendar who chose a random date on the secular calendar to celebrate, basically had a mobile birthday. My grandmother had that, and when we finally checked what precise date her birthday was on\u2026 her parents got the secular date wrong. From the time she was four, she always celebrated her birthday on a different (but equally wrong date). I told her this when she was \u2026 not young, and she told me back that she was old enough to celebrate her birthday whenever she liked.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We stick by The King\u2019s\/Queen\u2019s Birthday, not because we\u2019re wildly Royalist, but because winter celebrations are few and far between. It\u2019s cold and it\u2019s dark and we live in Narnia ruled by Jadis. I don\u2019t mind that there\u2019s no Christmas (I\u2019m Jewish, so why should I mind?) but the cold and dark are harder to endure when there are no parties.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After Monday, my life will be cold and partyless. Right now, the days are getting shorter and it\u2019s very tempting to stay in bed. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Think of me as you enjoy summer.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I\u2019m late because I went to an (online) convention in New Zealand over the weekend, and had meetings most of yesterday and an excellent but long meeting today. Everyone\u2019s trying to get all kinds of things done because it\u2019s a long weekend next weekend. Last weekend was a long weekend in New Zealand, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}