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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: rrd@fc.hp.com (Ray Depew)
Subject: Re: Holidays
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 19:41:20 GMT

Ray Depew (rrd@fc.hp.com) wrote:

[Note to new readers: lines that start with a double-dot and a space are lines that I'm quoting from the original. For the sake of courtesy, I'm only quoting every single line in the original, as that would be a waste of everyone's disk space, and I would not want to do such a thing as wast everyone's disk space, believing as I do that 'brevity is the soul of wit', and so I will only quote those parts which are relevant to my reply.]

: I lived in Italy for a couple of years, and it took me a while to get used to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Wouldn't it be neat if Alt.Folklore.Urban had a motto? If it did, then I think this would be an excellent choice.

: Back when the Roman Empire was a pagan land full of vomitoria and other cool
: things, they celebrated the solstices, the equinoxes, Caesar's birthday and
: tons of other excuses for a party. They called each day a "festa," Italian
: for "party" or "feast".

My goodness, those Italians will do anything for a party! [Note to new readers: this is meant as a humorous witticism, and should not be misinterpreted as an ethnic slur.]

: (get it? "holy day" => "holiday" in English? are you
: Delphi readers still with me?)

[Note to new readers: the original author omitted the notation on this comment, which would have indicated that it was meant to be a sarcastic in-joke among the longtime Alt.Folklore.Urban readership community, where "longtime" means anyone who has been reading Alt.Folklore.Urban for more than three weeks.]

: The year was literally peppered with these holy days, and productivity in
: the land went way down. This is one of the reasons that Luigi Barzini,
: in his 1996 capolavoro "The Italians," said "We [Italians] may be the
: first people ever to turn our country from a developed nation into an
: underdeveloped nation."

[Once again, this was obviously an amusing line, but the original author should have added an annotation to that effect so that new readers would be sure to catch the humor.]

: This was fine, but it was still not enough. So today, whenever enough
: Italians decide they want a holiday, they call a national strike.

Sheesh! Anything for a party!
[Note to new readers: this is meant as a humorous witticism, and should not be misinterpreted as an ethnic slur.]
[Note to new readers: this is meant as a humorous witticism, and should not be misinterpreted as an ethnic slur.]
[Note to new readers: often, writers on Alt.Folklore.Urban will disguise their "sheesh" comment by substituting each letter with one offset 13 places from it in the alphabet. The result is left as an exercise for the interested reader.]

: I'm still trying to figure out a way to explain why everyone takes off the
: last two weeks of August. It's called "ferie." I've heard some people
: refer to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, but not everybody. And it's
: not an official holiday, more like a custom that's too good to pass up.

[Once again, this might have been intended as an amusing line, but the original author should have added an annotation to that effect so that new readers would be sure to catch the humor.]

Regards
Ray "Note to new readers: it is customary, but by no means mandatory, to include a humorous phrase as a middle name in Alt.Folklore.Urban" Depew