My 10 Favorite Days of the Year

I had this idea for a blog post a a few weeks ago.  Today is one of my 10 favorite days of the year (we'll get there).  And we're just a few days away from another one, so it seemed like a good day to write this.  Let's start with some honorable mentions:

NFL Championship Sunday, Easter Eve, the first night of the NFL Draft, Easter Eve, Memorial Day, Christmas Eve.  Easter Eve was probably the toughest one for me to leave out of the top 10.  I've had some great Easter Eves with John, Vinny, and Darryl.  The most famous one involved somebody having to be carried away in a Superman pose.  NFL Championship Sunday is the last day with more than one football game and those games happen to have great significance.  The first night of the NFL Draft is the oasis in the long football offseason.  Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer.  And Christmas Eve is great, but I'm more of a Christmas Day fan.  Now let's get to my top 10 in reverse order:

10.  New Year's Day.  I can't put this any higher right now, but it might be in my top 5 in a couple of years.  College football used to own New Year's Day.  Now they still have a good number of bowl games, but the Rose Bowl has been the only game on New Year's that I've made a point of watching recently.  There's also the NHL's Winter Classic, which is solid.  Apparently the college football playoff is going to reclaim New Year's Day for college football.  If New Year's Day becomes a great day of college football again, I'll have to move it up the list.

9.  The first Saturday of college football (but not in 2007 or 2011).  College football has the shortest season of the big sports.  It really goes for three months.  Then there's the awful wait from the end of the season until the bowl games.  Usually there aren't many great games as the big teams try to schedule easy wins for week 1, but it's just nice to have college football back after the long offseason.

8.  Thanksgiving.  Football:  good.  Food:  good.  Recovering from Thanksgiving Eve:  well...

7.  The first day of summer vacation.  It's such a great feeling to not have to worry about anything for two months.

6.  Super Bowl Sunday.  This would rank higher if I liked a team that had made the Super Bowl during my lifetime.  It's the last day of meaningful football until late August.  It's a day where sports and capitalism come together.  We just need to make it so that we have the next day off (I already covered that in my Lincoln's Birthday post).

5.  Today.  What is today?  The day Sam Adams Summer Ale comes out.  As one of my friends once said, "I love Summer Ale and everything it stands for."  If you think I'm kidding, you obviously don't know me well enough.  Last year I wrote on the Sam Adams facebook page, "The day I drink my first Summer Ale each year is easily one of my ten favorite days of the year."  And now here I am blogging about it.  I just picked up my first 12 pack today and that was the inspiration for this post.  I will be drinking Summer Ale from now until the end of November.  Those four months without Summer Ale are rough.  It's definitely my favorite beverage.  Octoberfest is also excellent, but it means that Summer Ale is disappearing.  Winter Lager really doesn't do anything for me.  Alpine Spring is good, but it's no Summer Ale.  I've gotten several of my friends hooked on Summer Ale.  This wasn't my first rant about how much I love Summer Ale and it won't be the last.

I've missed you, old friend.

4.  The first four days of the NCAA Tournament.  I know, this is cheating.  This marks the real end of winter and the terrible post-Super Bowl period in sports.  I love the Big East Tournament and that's when I'm finally excited about what's going on in sports again, but those games don't really mean anything.  I've taken the Friday that's the second day of the tournament off each of the last four years.  One of my favorite nights was the Thursday night three years ago.  Pete and I went out in Huntington just before he moved back to England.  It was the day after St. Patrick's Day and the day before the weekend, so the town was dead.  But Pete and I had dinner at Canterbury Ales and then we stayed out and watched basketball and drank.  It was a great time.

3.  Opening Day of baseball season.  We're almost there.  Baseball is my favorite sport and after a long offseason (of the four major sports, only football has a longer offseason), baseball is finally back.  Major League Baseball needs to fix Opening Day (I already covered that too), but it's still great.  There's hope for every team.  I'm going to my first Opening Day this year and I'm really excited.  In the words of Joe DiMaggio, "You always get a special kick on Opening Day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen."

2.  Christmas.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus, Santa, Rickey Henderson, and Ed Hochuli.  It's the only time that I don't have a problem with cold weather.  After Christmas, I've had enough of winter, but it should be cold for Christmas.  You have Christmas music and lights.  You can enjoy watching the NBA's best teams.  It's a great day.

1.  The Fourth of July.  Back in July I covered how we have our celebration of independence from Great Britain messed up, so I won't get into that again.  The other thing we need to fix is that the Blue Jays should never ever have a home game from July 2 to July 4 (they shouldn't get a home game for Opening Day either).  Despite that, the Fourth of July is a great day.  We celebrate the independence of the greatest country in the history of the world.  It's early summer, the day is long, baseball is going on, and I can drink Summer Ale. There are fireworks.  Joey Chestnut's dominance of Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest is another source of national pride (I don't want to see a Japanese guy winning on the Fourth of July).  There are fireworks.  There are a lot of good things about the Fourth of July.  It's my favorite day of the year.