The recent holiday season has come to a close, and in the midst of the many feelings about holidays, there are certain things celebrated in them. Outside of the obvious commercialism and even controversy, days like Thanksgiving and Christmas are days of thanksgiving and the celebration of Christ’s birth respectively.

In the aftermath of the holidays, today I listened to a song that I always enjoy from MartyMar of Social Club. It’s from his newest EP called Marty For President. The name of the song is The One With My Friends, and featured a few artists, which you can check out below:

For some reason, the verse by Fern drew my attention more than usual this time, especially when he mentioned Father’s Day and his birthday being everyday. When listening, its OBVIOUS that the joy of being a father and daily life was the meaning, but him saying that stuck out to me. It made me think about how often people say that about those days in particular, and set apart days in general.

Using the example of Father’s Day, you can expect to hear the statement that Father’s Day is everyday for someone. Another would be, “Instead of Resurrection Sunday (or Easter) we should celebrate the resurrection of Christ everyday”. The idea is that many people put more stock into the meaning of that set apart day of celebration than actually seeing it’s importance on their daily lives, and living in that.

This attempt to get away from the apparent abuse of holidays ends up removing the importance of why things are made specific in the first place. Example, if your birthday was actually celebrated everyday, you remove the special importance the day holds in the first place since it becomes a daily thing. But if you celebrate it on the exact day, you draw attention to its importance to you, your family, and your friends.

You may say, “Well, birthdays and other celebrations like Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and more are man-made Lamar, and it’s all commercialized what’s your point?” Even if something is able to be capitalized on for money, there’s an important point. The point would be to go deeper and see how much God Himself set days and even years apart to make special recognition of events, etc.

The Day of Atonement, Year Of Jubilee, Feast of Tabernacles, Sabbath, and Pentecost are just some of the days and years that were set apart by God for the nation of Israel to observe. When you set a day apart to celebrate, remember, commemorate, or honor a(n) person/event you draw attention to its importance. You also make a space for reflection and reminders that can often get lost when you do things so repeatedly.

We all understand this concept when it comes to supply and demand, where the rarity of an object determines the demand and price of it. We also see it when God speaks through Solomon in saying a virtuous woman is like rubies, which are rare enough that he says, “who can find it?(Proverbs 31:10)” These are different areas outside of holidays, yet they hold the same concept.

There are just some things that aren’t meant to be like everything else. There are days that are supposed to stand out and be separated more than other days. Daily occurrences aren’t automatically less in value than rare occurrences, they’re just familiar. Even if you take the special nature of a consistent individual or God Himself as another example, it’s something that’s overlooked when we don’t take the time to remember how important it is.

How many times have you felt devalued when your consistency was enjoyed but not recognized? How did God respond to Israel’s complaint in the midst of Him consistently providing everything they needed? There’s power in taking specific notice of things and people.

When you point to something specific with holidays, days of remembrance, and more, you give the space and opportunity to celebrate the things that hold importance to your life and influences/transforms your daily life. Recognize that when you set apart anything, you bring honor to it.