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HISTORY OF THIS HOLIDAY (AS RESEARCHED BY HISTORIAN
QUARREL)
The Religion of IT is a religion which celebrates weirdness.
While this is the basic premise of the religion, there are also a
set of fundamental ideas which form the basis of the Religion of IT.
True to form, most Itonians don't even know that these ideas exist.
However, these fundamental ideas do exist, and the whole point of
this holiday is to illustrate one of the most important ones - that
nothing, and life in particular, should be taken too seriously. IT
felt that this was such an important fundamental idea that IT decreed
that the Itonians should have a holiday in order to remind themselves
of it.
Besotted Flower Day is that day. It is based on events
which occurred Gar Denshed, a large planet with extremely fertile
soil and a great climate. The Garians were quite literally besotted
with the myriad of flower species which grew on their planet. In fact,
their entire belief system was based on superstitions involving flowers.
And this was to cause them no end of problems.
Several hessian bags found at the back of the Reincarnation
Shed in Itonia told the story of the infamous Yellow Flowers of Doom.
This innocent plant species was introduced to Gar Denshed by an Itonian
with a warped sense of humour - Colyn - who was taking advantage of
an old Garian superstition. Yellow Flowers of Doom are relatively
unimpressive and look similar to daises. However, they are unique
in that they all have a certain number of petals.
The particular superstition Colyn was using was one
which the petals are pulled off the yellow flower one by one, each
time saying "Doomed" or "Not Doomed" for each petal. (A bit like the
Earth superstition "S/He loves me" or S/He loves me not.") The last
petal remaining showed whether or not you were doomed. Doomed to what
was anyone's guess, but the Garians took the whole thing very seriously
nonetheless.
With the Yellow Flowers of Doom, no matter whether you
started on "Doomed" or "Not Doomed", it always worked out that you
were doomed, and that was the whole point of the flowers. They drove
the Garians up the wall, across the ceiling and down the other side.
In the end, the Garians were so convinced that they were doomed that
they didn't do anything at all. (And later a couple of enterprising
Chelonians came to Gar Denshed and opened a successful intergalactic
florist business).
I'd like to give this highly moral tale a happy ending,
but history can only be rewritten that dramatically with the aid of
a time machine. The Garians never lightened up, but after a few years
Colyn came to their aid in an attempt to make some sort of amends
for his actions. Colyn got the Garians into a writing trade - writing
fortunes for fortune cookies. With the aid of a thesaurus to provide
synonyms for "doomed", of course.
I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles if you take
things too seriously.
TRADITIONAL CELEBRATION METHOD OF THIS DAY (AS
RESEARCHED BY LORD HOGFISH)
Besotted Flower Day is a day to remind ourselves not to take things
too seriously. The Yellow Flowers of Doom are traditionally plucked
as a symbolic reminder, not to mention that it's heaps of fun to give
other people a lesson in not taking things too seriously by insisting
that the flower told them that they are doomed. Some Itonians also
like to eat fortune cookies on this holiday as a tribute to Saint
Colyn.
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