Super Bowl Day is the first big non-official holiday on the calendar and to many people it feels like a regular holiday. On Super Bowl Day the excitement is in the air and even if your team is not playing the game you still either make plans to host your Super Bowl party or you have already accepted an invitation to someone else’s Super Bowl Day gathering. People put on costumes and enter a house that is decorated with the colors and sights of the day. Super Bowl Day plates, napkins, and posters are everywhere and if you are going to a party with a really dedicated host you should also see a few footballs doubling as heating crocks as well holding maybe a warm dip or even some chicken wings. It is a time when people gather together in sports bars all over the world and watch the gladiators of the gridiron get together and duke it out for the right to be called champion. It is that one thing that is truly American that captivates the rest of the world for just one day and is also something we can send to our troops overseas just to remind them a little of what they are fighting for.

People look forward to the game of course but on Super Bowl Day people also look forward to the television commercials that will be featured during the game. It is the only day of the entire year where people look forward to the commercials on television and sometimes the commercials deliver and sometimes they don’t. Of course the most memorable commercials are the ones that are created with humor and the funniest ones inevitably get voted as the best commercials the next day. That has always been a curious custom to me when an international audience of over a half a billion people will agree by majority that the funniest commercials were indeed the best but yet a comedy has rarely ever won an Academy Award for best movie of the year. So does that mean that the public requires humor to be sold or that the Academy is not choosing the movies that are popular with the public? I think it means that popular culture thrives on comedy but fortunately those that are charged with handing out the annual artistic awards are not influenced by pop culture.

So enjoy your Super Bowl Day and make sure you buy a square in a football pool somewhere. Be it at your office or your favorite bar you have to buy at least one square. If your team is playing in the big game make sure you wear your colors proudly and stand by your team even if they are losing badly by halftime. It doesn’t matter who wins the game because in the end it is the American way of life that wins. Gross Capitalism surrounded by a game of pure violence created by Americans and broadcast to people all over the world. What better way to celebrate the American way of life for at least one day every year? Other countries, and groups of people, may have their differences with the United States but for one day out of the year everyone turns into a fan of the NFL and there is nothing wrong with that. It is that universal language of competition, glitz and glamour, and over the top commercialization that reach out to people and touch them in ways they never knew they could be touched and that is okay for one day. Who knows? Maybe Vladimir Putin has a pick for this year’s Super Bowl already.