We’ve all heard of Christmas. Most of us have heard of Kwanzaa. Some of us have heard of Festivus. But, less than twenty people have heard of Holiday Snake Man Day. I, the singular chairman on the Holiday Snake Man Day Committee for Necessary Promotional Essays, am here to tell you about this totally non-fake, real holiday celebrated today, December 18.
Holiday Snake Man comes from the Ukrainian folktale of “Holiday Snake Man.” In this famous tale, a snake named “Holi” is slithering around, as snakes tend to do. When all of a sudden, a man walks by. The snake, surprised, follows the man all the way back to his будинок (house). Once there, the non-man snake speaks to the non-snake man, asking for his name. Surprised by the talking snake, the man reflexively roundhouse kicks the serpent right in his dumb face, while shouting his name, “Day.” At the moment his boot struck the snake’s stupid, talking face, a nuclear meltdown occurred down the road, morphing the two animals together into the slimy irradiated being known as Chernobyl’s “Holiday Snake Man.”
To celebrate Holiday Snake Man Day, many things must be done. First, you must go into your yard and dig a series of intricate 6-inch diameter tunnels at a varying depth between 1-2 meters. This is done to welcome Holiday Snake Man, much as rubbing blood of a lamb on a door is done for Passover. Once the construction of the snake man tunnels have finished, rub blood of a lamb on the front door. This is done just in case the Jews are the right ones. Post blood rubbing, one should immediately start to engage in the celebratory brunch for the tunnel digging and animal murder. Once it has hit the three required awkward conversational pauses, we can proceed to the next tradition: Eating seven more, increasingly poorly executed celebratory brunches, with the last brunch literally being four saltine crackers with the words “brunch” written on them with a black sharpie.
When the “Eating of the Brunches” has disappointingly concluded, you must now write to Holiday Snake Man. Much like the writing to Santa Claus, where you detail what you would like for Christmas and explain how you have been a good little child, Holiday Snake Man writing is similar except replace Christmas with Holiday Snake Man Day, and replace “explain how you have been a good little child” with “explain the plot of the 2008 animated film Space Chimps.” After your request and review have be scribed on the post card of choice, please send it to:
1 Guest Street
Boston, Mass
02134
From there, the local PBS will burn the letters for heat, not because of tradition, but because they have no money to pay for a nice ceramic heater for the office. Holiday Snake Man doesn’t mind, though. He loves both fire and Charlie Rose.
Once the writing of your letters have been sent, now the final tradition can take place: Protesting places of businesses that will not hold symbols of Holiday Snake Man Day. No company displays our symbol, a copy of Space Chimps on Blu-Ray, and we must change it. The official protest procedure for Holiday Snake Man Day goes as follows. If at any point the business decides to display Chimps, stop immediately. Anyways…
Steps for an Official Holiday Snake Man Day Protest:
1) Calmly ask them if they will display Space Chimps on Blu-Ray
2) Calmly ask them if they will at least display Space Chimps on DVD
3) Demand that any version of Space Chimps is visible
4) Loudly announce the plot of Space Chimps, spoiling it for everybody
5) Burn your bras
6) Burn your Space Chimps themed bras
7) Let snakes loose in the building
And if none of the above steps work…
8) Quietly walk out, after farting in everybody’s soup
That’s it. There are no more things you can do for Space Chimps Holiday Snake Man. Go home. Wait until next year like a good little Snake Boy, and watch Space Chimps Two.
-EJS, Staff Member; Hareesh Menon, Contributor; and James Wagner, Senior Staff Member