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HISTORY OF THIS HOLIDAY (AS RECORDED BY HISTORIAN QUARREL)
Many people think that this is a somber, if not downright
morbid holiday. They are all completely wrong. Bauhinia Death and
Weed Day was named so to give the day the sense of gravity that it
so lacked. The story, which I discovered after interviewing one of
the ancient fire-breathing purple clams who guard the turquoise lake
south of Itonia (who says a historian’s job is all ancient scrolls?),
runs something like this…
The ancient Itonians were not a staid and boring race
and neither was their religion. Unlike many other religions, the religion
of IT does use rituals, ceremonies and symbols in order to celebrate
the great God IT. Itonians are more inclined to celebrate IT by having
parties at which there is much food and carousing. Another way Itonians
celebrate the great God IT is by being as weird as they can (without
drawing the attention of local authorities) and by annoying any boring
non-Itonians. But a now lost way of celebrating the great God IT,
which was once practiced by Itonians, has been discovered. It is the
art of practical jokes.
The holiday of Bauhinia Death and Weed day comes from
an incident involving the sentient plant species which were assistants
to the invisible acolytes at the Temple of IT. According to the ancient
sources, this sentient plant species, which were Bauhinia plants –
hence the name, developed a great sense of their own importance. They
felt that their task as assistants to the invisible acolytes was more
vital to the religion of IT than it was in reality. The Bauhinias
started acting very pompously and the Itonians got to feeling that
this set of self-made tall-poppies needed taking down a peg or three.
It is a little known fact that exploding porridge, something
rarely seen these days, was an Itonian invention. Toby Oats, the Itonian
responsible for this dynamite cuisine, first tried his idea out by
detonating some bowls of porridge in an empty field. Because this
was a secret experiment, most Itonians were suitably puzzled the next
day to find a field full of weeds covered with porridge. It was hypothesized
that these were a new species of plant and the weeds were renamed
as porridge weeds. It was several weeks before Toby revealed the real
reason for the existence of the porridge weeds, and not before several
eminent scientists had appeared on 3D TV declaring that they were
the first to discover this fanastic new plant. But as soon as he did
so, several other Itonians got the idea of using Toby’s invention
to play a practical joke on the Bauhinias. This involved setting bowls
of porridge all around the area of the Temple of IT. Most of the Bauhinias
were covered in porridge, as well as a number of invisible acolytes.
Everyone agreed after the practical joke that the porridge-covered
Bauhinia’s looked exactly like the fictious porridge weeds. Thus,
from that day on, the Bauhinia’s were rarely taken very seriously
and so could not become as pompous as they had been. They were also
no longer called Bauhinia’s but Porridge Weeds – hence the name Bauhina
Death and Weed Day.
If there were a saint for this day, it would have to
be Toby Oats, the Itonian whose invention was responsible for the
events behind this day.
TRADITIONAL CELEBRATION METHOD OF THIS DAY (AS
RESEARCHED BY HISTORIAN QUARREL)
Things to do on Bauhinia Death and Weed Day include playing practical
jokes on people, leveling any self-important people you know or (for
no readily apparent reason) having papier mache fights.
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