Hello, and welcome to the website. I go by Reverend Mike, and this site is a companion to the podcast “Downtime With Rev. Mike.”
“Downtime” was created to offer a quiet, contemplative space for relaxing and perhaps dozing off. Existentialist life can be exhausting, and I find one of the most relaxing things to do is sit back and mind-hop from one topic about the world to another.
We’ll cover just about anything in these rambles about the universe in which we live: railroads, Star Wars, Uncle Scrooge comic books, early computers, the moon landings and more. If you find the discussions and digressions sleep-inducing—well, that’s fine.
My ordination is through the Internet, and my theological and philosophical leanings are toward existentialism. Don’t worry: The podcast is about relaxation and wonder, not proselytizing. There is a page on this website with a starter list of existentialist resources, if you’re interested in learning more.
Festival of Sleep Day
Today is Jan. 3, and the Internet tells me that Jan. 3 is Festival of Sleep Day. That’s as good a subject as any for today.
According to … well, many websites, Festival of Sleep Day is an opportunity to sleep in, doze and otherwise catch a break. Sleep, nap, relax–that’s the idea.
We could leave it there and perhaps look through a list of ways to celebrate the day, but an as-yet-unsolved mystery came up as I scratched into the topic: Where did this holiday originate?
Origins
This is the mystery: From a basic online search before morning coffee, there doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut origin story for Festival of Sleep Day. Mother’s Day goes back at least to the 1800s and was signed into U.S. law in 1914. Father’s Day became a U.S. observance in 1972. International Talk Like a Pirate Day was started by John Baur and Mark Summers while they were playing racquetball in 1995, according to The Register Guard of Oregon.
Festival of Sleep Day, though, has quite a few mentions online, but not so much in the way of sourcing. Here’s a sampling of what I mean:
- A North Carolina TV station on Jan. 3, 2022, said the day was a national festival without giving history.
- TimeandDate.com says the holiday is unofficial and the origins are unknown.
- HolidayInsights.com says “our research on this day failed to uncover the origin.”
- The marketing website AngieGensler.com says the holiday “traces its origins back to the early 2000s” and was a “whimsical” observance. It goes on to suggest ways to use the day to market a business, such as by offering sleep-themed promotions.
- The Empuls blog tells the reader to “explore the journey through the history, celebration ideas and messages that encapsulate the essence of Festival of Sleep Day” but doesn’t appear to have any history. It does have tips to promote employee wellness and offers “20 Wishes for Festival of Sleep Day.” Pillows and clouds feature. Empuls is an “AI-powered recognition & rewards platform” …
- Speaking of AI, ChatGPT said the holiday’s origins “are somewhat unclear.” It offers one possibility: that it began with Boston radio station WZLX in 1998 and gives a link to holidaycalendar.io.
Holidaycalendar.io indeed says Boston radio station WZLX created Festival of Sleep in 1998 to give some encouragement to listeners in winter months and gained national traction in 2000, with online platforms beginning to note the holiday in 2005. - The website for Medical Associates of Northwest Arkansas, on the other hand, says Google’s Ngram viewer shows “Festival of Sleep” first showed up in books in 1889, and that the peak use of those words was in 1918 and 1919. Then it, too, goes to the early 2000s-2002, specifically–and says “Festival of Sleep” is being mentioned as a favorite holiday.
Granted, this is where limitations of online research showed up. I searched X and found two festivalofsleep hashtags for 2012 and nothing earlier.
And yet: The website NDTV might be on the mark with its 2020 headline “These World Sleep Day Jokes Taking Over Twitter Are So Relatable.” It’s actually about “World Sleep Day,” observed on March 13, not Jan. 3. The article says World Sleep Day was organized by the World Sleep Day Committee of the World Sleep Society.
More research needs to be done. After coffee. If you know the real origin story of Festival of Sleep Day, please short-circuit the process and leave a comment.
I have to wonder if the clues are in the AngieGensler and MANA posts, which say “early 2000s,” which screams “social media.” It’s possible Festival of Sleep started as an earnest movement, or as a sort of online joke.
Either way, movements tend to get started informally before they receive a stamp of approval from someone. The origin stories of both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are like that. “Early 2000s” seems about right for starting an unofficial holiday through social media, just because. “May the Fourth” as “Star Wars Day” supposedly has been around since at least 1979, but I don’t remember hearing about it till the early 2000s, and then after the Walt Disney Company bought “Star Wars” from George Lucas, it began officially observing the holiday. “May the Fourth be With You.”
Something spreading online rapidly doesn’t speak to the thing’s validity, but it does speak to acceptance.
Hoaxes and Defictionalization
If the holiday did start as a joke or a hoax–which I’d say would be an attempt to make people believe it was a real holiday instead of just saying “let’s celebrate”–then we’ll have other paths to follow. Wikipedia lists many “Wikipedia Hoaxes,” such as Donovan Slacks, a made-up British revolutionary who survived online from 2004 to early 2024. There was also a hoax Wikipedia entry for a made-up TV series called “Rough Crossing” that lasted from 2007 to 2022. Then again, it’s possible the Wikipedia Hoaxes are themselves hoaxes.
I confess when I read the paperback version of “The Princess Bride,” I looked in the library to see if the supposed original author “S. Morgenstern” was real. This was early Internet days, and I found nothing.
Some fictions become real. There’s a TV Trope called “Defictionalization” that occurs when an object in a movie or book is brought into existence.
My favorite example is “The Red Stapler.” The story goes that a red Swingline stapler featured in the comedy “Office Space” existed only as a prop: a black Swingline was painted red for the movie so a mumbling character named Milton, played by Stephen Root, could obsess over it. Swingline didn’t make red staplers but after the movie came out people started asking for them. The movie premiered in 1999, and in April 2002, Swingline debuted the red stapler.
I keep one in my desk, second drawer from the top. It staples well.
Digressions
I’m digressing, though. The mystery of how Festival of Sleep got started is still unresolved. The truth is out there, just not in the space of a light Internet search. Not before coffee, at any rate.
By the way, May the Fourth doesn’t sit well with me as a day to celebrate Star Wars because the movie was released May 25. But it rhymes, and rhyming trumps most anything.
So be it. Happy Festival of Sleep Day. Happy early May the Fourth.
Possibly Useful Links
International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Register-Guard: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Avast!+No+lubbers+today%2c+ye+scurvy+bilge+rats!-a0110174926
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day
Festival of Sleep Day
HolidayInsights.com: https://www.holidayinsights.com/other/festivalofsleep.htm
TimeandDate.com: https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/fun/festival-of-sleep-day
AngieGensler.com: https://angiegensler.com/festival-of-sleep-day/
Empuls: https://blog.empuls.io/festival-of-sleep-day/
HolidayCalendar: https://www.holidaycalendar.io/holiday/festival-of-sleep-day?
MANA: https://mana.md/the-festival-of-sleep/
WKBT News 8 Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rmJEi1nTe8&list=PLeHkCRWDEEbV4BIc4ut15nkz_9OByTwQy
WFMY News 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHGWKxUoF2Y
World Sleep Day
NDTV: https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/world-sleep-day-2020-these-jokes-taking-over-twitter-are-so-relatable-2194253
World Sleep Congress
https://worldsleepcongress.com/
Mother’s Day
Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mothers-Day
National Women’s History Alliance: https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/commemorations/history-of-mothers-day/
Father’s Day
Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fathers-Day
Economic Times: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/meet-sonora-smart-dodd-the-woman-who-started-the-tradition-of-fathers-day/articleshow/59202599.cms
Star Wars
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(film)
Wikipedia again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day
Wikipedia Hoaxes
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia
Defictionalization
TVTropes.org: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Defictionalization
The Red Stapler
CBR.com: https://www.cbr.com/office-space-red-stapler-milton-swingline/
