Forgetting Holidays

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Things like Holidays and Birthdays I know mean a lot to most people, but to me I could care less. Which makes me forgetful of them. I always pre-buy Cards for the next years, so I remember to send one the appropriate day. Today is mothers day and I had to write a note to remind myself of it.

Is this an Aspie thing?

Last edited by King Kat 1 on 09 May 2021, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Every day is a holiday somewhere in the world

Rosencrantz and guildenstern (parents plural) are dead

Forgot today was mother's day

But often forget holidays

You could set reminders on your phone or computer

Some precious lil "people" act like, you personally insulted them by forgetting their birthdays

My dad said that, businessmen invented holidays so they could profit from greeting cards

I don't have children

One sibling, who doesn't particularly care about her birthday or mine

I didn't go to her wedding

I didn't go to my Associates or Bachelor degree graduation ceremony

I did not go to guildensterns funeral

By far, the best "friend" that I have ever had, last week, emailed to tell me that, when I requested a weekly ride, I "used" her, and she is not going to drive my deformed skeleton around anymore. So, right now, zero birthdays I need to memorize

I don't seem to live chronologically. Things tied to a calendar are meaningless. Since stopping social media I don't get reminders of such things so I forget.

I don't care about holidays or birthdays. Never did.

/Mats

I always used to remember birthdays when I was a child. Don't know if that was because they'd remind me. But there were only 4 of us so there weren't many birthdays to remember. I think I was OK till I'd been through a couple of marriages and I'd kept having to change the birthdays and anniversary dates, as if I only really had the memory capacity for the first set of memorable days, and having to wipe and rewrite the data a few times just got too difficult. I've got all the important dates in a computer calendar these days, and as I use my computer a lot I get automatically reminded. I'm barely interested in my own birthday, though when I was young it was an exciting time.

I didn't know I was supposed to remember holidays. At school and when I was working I suppose I noticed when I got the day off and everybody was talking about the occasion (if there was one), though I was never one for performing whatever ceremonies they had. I used to like bonfire night because I got the chance to mess with fireworks, but I don't recall that being an actual holiday. I quite like the idea of Halloween, but not the way it's normally done, I see that as cheap and shallow. I like the Solstices. Most people don't seem interested in that. I'm usually much more interested in the special days that others don't pay much attention to. So I like Burns' Night and Twelfth Night. I just don't think much to modern mainstream rituals with all the stereotyping and commercialisation. I much prefer something off the beaten track. Mainstream stuff usually bores me.

I can get surprised by some yearly celebrations and holidays even in the local culture, but I'll have no trouble getting 3 birthday cards out on time this year, and it used to be more. I'm pretty aware of the sky news, too.

I could never remember what day was Christmas.

I knew it was in December and somewhere in the 20's but I didn't know if it was a Sunday holiday or even if it was different days different years.

I was in my 40's when someone at work told me a joke that solved the problem. I now can remember what day Christmas is!

     Q: Why can't programmers tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas?

     A: Because Octal 31 = Decimal 25!

I can't remember the last time I remembered a holiday without being prompted. I'm really bad about it. It causes problems.

Could the problem be more of a USA thing than a UK thing? I can't think of any UK holidays that carry stiff social penalties for ignoring them, apart from Christmas, and as every shopkeeper and media maker in the UK screams loud and often about that event, it's almost impossible to forget it. So what are these holidays? I'm guessing that Thanksgiving is one of them, but what else?

There are places where May the Fourth (be with you) is most sacred, and others where Homecoming is the party of the year. For a good guide to mainstream local customs, however, just look for the highlighted squares on many calendars. For May, according to Unicef, I should know about Mother's Day, the end of Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr, the International Day of Families, 3 days of Shauvot, Victoria Day, and the International Day of UN Peacekeepers. The Wildlife Federation has two repeats, and adds a day for migratory birds, and two for endangered species.

^
I think some of my original surprise must be down to my equating "holiday" with time off work. I suppose there are some ritual days in the UK - somehow I always managed to remember Mother's Day (no longer required since Mum died and I never extended my observances towards other people's mothers). I guess I get out of a lot of the religious rituals by being secular.

My life saver for remembering events is the Lightning task reminder that's built into the Thunderbird email client. It's much better than Facebook for birthdays because it can be configured to warn me in advance, while there's still time to do something more significant than just post a "Happy birthday" comment. Honestly, for Facebook-only friends I sometimes wonder about writing a script to post those automatically on my behalf.

But I'm still intrigued about what the bad things are that happen to people who forget ritual days. It's one of the beefs I have with society in general, that they might have the gall to think less of somebody for having a bad memory for dates. I'm happy for rituals to happen as long as people find them fun, but when they get all serious and negative about not getting it quite right, I start wishing they'd loosen up a bit. I've got a mother in law who is apparently unhappy that I'm picky about food so that she can never feed me, and to soothe her I'm undertaking to eat (the contents of) a tin of soup that she will open and heat up for me when her birthday comes round. I don't mind exactly, but I still can't quite get my brain round the fact that it means that much to her.

Quite a few women feel like they have failed as women if a guest does not eat. Unless she is very unreliable or unskilled, I'd try to settle on eating at least one dish she makes.

^
I'm hoping to god the tin of soup will be enough. In absolute terms she's not a bad cook as such, but there are massive differences in our views about what's healthy. Then there's my vegetarian thing. And rather different degrees of aversion to the risk of Covid-19.

^ The vegetarian thing is my social albatross, and it keeps getting worse. For a while, I was able to take advantage of a kosher kitchen having separate surfaces for meat and dairy, but I'm vegan now, and won't eat anywhere I can see or smell dead animals, unless, perhaps, they are game hunted for subsistence and given all the traditional rituals of Stone-Age religion. I imaging having a shot at offering to "say Grace" and then praying interminably for all the domestic animals, hoping to ruin appetites. All domestic animals make fine pets if you have the space, so the meat in the stores is basically abused, abandoned pets.

Vegetarianism was usually fine with friends of my own choosing, indeed I was often better thought of because of it. But like the world of work, marriage is one of those institutions that forces people to try and get on with others who, though they might not be bad people as such, have social mores that foist some painful choices onto the individual. I guess that's why NTs have to be so false.

There are two holidays I am not allowed to ignore: Her Birthday, Our Anniversary. Neglecting her on Valentines Day or Christmas would also be looked down upon.

(The calendar on my computer can remind me of things in advance.)