January 23rd - Bounty Day and Pie Day

My internet is working for this again, so the posts are getting edited into their rightful spots.

HOW I CELEBRATED

Bounty Day is a local custom on Pitcairn Island, so I wasn't able to get the whole festival-like atmosphere and group burning of a replica of the vessel or anything, and in fact my mom put the kibash on my burning a printed image of the boat on the driveway (my way of burning it in effigy). What I was left with then, was the book itself. William Bligh's classic firsthand account of the ship being wrested from his command is a pretty great read. I learned from the error of my ways with Winnie the Pooh, though, so I only read part of it.

Pie Day (not to be confused with Pi Day) was easy, I simply ate a piece of Apple Pie.

HOW OTHERS MIGHT CELEBRATE

I'm not going to insult you by explaining how to celebrate Pie Day, I assume anyone reading this blog is smart enough that they didn't even need the first food-related holiday to be explained to them, much less be so unobservant as to completely fail to catch the pattern of their celebrations.

Bounty Day is much more interesting. You really can't celebrate it completely properly without being on Pitcairn Island as, like I said before, it is a purely local custom. You can do a pretty decent job of observing it anyway, though. Rather than just rewording Wikipedia's entry on the holiday, however, I will just link it and let your curiosity do the rest. Also, I had a well-thought out entry for this on the 23rd, but the screwy internet connection that night made it impossible to post it and I don't feel like thinking it all out again at the moment.

HISTORICAL/CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

Pie Day is another of those made up holidays with no seeming rhyme or reason to their placement on the calendar.

Bounty Day is a national holiday on Pitcairn Island in honour of the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty and the island's founding as a Westernized culture by said mutineers. It is also the National Holiday (on June 8th) for Norfolk Island which was granted by Queen Victoria as a home to the Pitcairners who traveled there in 1858.

UNOFFICIAL THEME SONG

Though I have never seen the movie, I'd assume that the main theme to the classic 1935 film "Mutiny on the Bounty" would be appropriate. Herbert Stothart composed the music. Charles Laughton and Clark Gable starred, for those who are curious.

FOOTNOTES

-Most movie adaptations of the events of the mutiny are based off the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall rather than Lt. Bligh's own account and are thus dramatized and somewhat historically inaccurate. The movie whose theme I've co-opted for this day's theme is no exception.

-As noted above, Norfolk Island's observance of Bounty Day is on June 8th, not January 23rd.

Other Holidays and observances on this date include:
-National Handwriting Day
-Measure Your Feet Day
-Catholic Feast Days for St. Abakuh, St. Emerentiana, and Blessed Marianne of Molokai