We Need a Holiday

Secretaries have Secretaries' Day. Working mothers have Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Federally observed holidays, like Veterans Day and Presidents' Day, plus all the religious or ethnic holidays like Easter and Kwanzaa and Yom Kippur...they all serve one purpose: They call attention to an event or a cause or a community.

As the end of the year rolls around, it occured to me that we, as a community, do not have a holiday.

Let's make one.

Now, this is not something I expect to see marked on national calendars alongside Boxing Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day. But I think an arbitrary holiday would...legitimize us, in a way. Gives us an excuse to celebrate, a reason to create new content for an annual event, an excuse to come together. And it's better than a convention, because none of us has to show our faces or fly anywhere.

So, that leads to two questions:

What do we call it? Inflation Day is likely to be confused with an economic event, so that's out. BE Day or B2E Day don't speak to everybody's interests, nor are they terribly self-explanatory. Blow Up Like a Balloon Day is too silly, even if it is what we'd all like to see happen. Inflationists Day makes people ask "What's an Inflationist?" And Inflatable Fetish Day does the job for me, but that's me. I think the title should define itself. When you hear Inflatable Fetish Day, most people would say, "There's an inflatable fetish?" That's a good reaction, you know?

When do we celebrate it? Here's a few ideas:

June 5 - In 1783, the Montgolfier Brothers flew the first balloon.

June 30 - This was the day Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory debuted in theaters in 1971.

Thanksgiving - Name another holiday that features a parade with giant balloons--not to mention the one time of year where people say "Any more and I feel like I could pop." Still, this one's kind of taken.

Any day in August - There are no federal holidays, and it's toward the end of the summer, before the wacky fall back-to-school time and the resulting holidays.

I'm open to other ideas. (July 3, 1994 was the day I first made contact with other inflatable fetishists--specifically Bill from the Balloon Buddies and, shortly thereafter, Sievert--and those conversations led to the first online group of inflatable fetishists, just a dozen people strong, later that year. I'm proud that pretty much everything else grew out of that. But July 3 is clearly a personal milestone and a little close to another existing holiday!) I'll probably post about this over at BodyInflation.org and see what happens. But comments are welcome here, too.