Don’t you just love it when a national holiday is proclaimed for one of your favorite things? The day takes on a special significance and indulging seems the best way to celebrate.

Today is one of those personally favorite holidays—National Ice Cream Day.

I don’t care about baked goods or candy, but ice cream is my weakness—as long as it’s not boring vanilla or insipid strawberry. I also prefer stuff in my ice cream, especially nuts or some form of dark chocolate.

Remember the saying we all used to chant, “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream?” It’s considered and American proverb, which I find hugely amusing.

Heywood C. Broun considered ice cream “soul stirring, “I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream”

I got a laugh from Howard Luck Gossage’s comparison, “To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone.” That’s still pretty accurate considering he said it more than 30 years ago.

Charles M. Schulz had a different idea in his comparison, but just as true, “Life is like an ice-cream cone, you have to lick it one day at a time.”

I’m not quite sure what Voltaire meant when he said, “Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.” But it’s a good think it’s not; I’d be in big trouble.

Last, but not least, is an anonymous saying, or consider it the wisdom of crowds; it certainly sums up my thoughts on the subject, “Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless”

Flickr image credit: outofmytree

Typically, my comments about gifts range from irreverent to downright sarcastic, but this year I actually have some pretty cool gift ideas for you.

First, however, let’s take a look at the cost of the traditional 364 gifts as described in the 12 Days of Christmas—the cost is up10.8% this year for a grand total of $96,824.

Or for a look at 50 years of extreme gifts, and I do mean extreme, for him and her check out the Neiman Marcus Gift Book.

For the geek you love who loves pictures or for those whose daily lives are so memorable they need recording consider a wearable camera—a gift they’ll never forget.

And for the not-so-geeky with faulty memories, like me, who still depend on their computer but forget to back up, there is Carbonite, not only a fabulous product, but from a company named as one of Boston’s 2010 Best Places to Work.

Two unusual books make my list.

The first of what will be three volumes is the “Autobiography of Mark Twain,” a $35, four-pound, 500,000-word doorstopper of a memoir” that Twain forbid his descendents to publish until 100 years after his death. Needless to say, his thoughts are exceedingly blunt.

The second is from a retired Wall Street banker who is dying of a brain tumor and offers “a remarkable story of an almost willful ignorance of the futility of active money management…” It’s good information for those on your list interested in having their money work smarter for them.

The last two are gifts that serve dual purposes.

The first is a $20 gadget called HydroRight that anyone can install without tools. (If the john still has a ball cock it needs an additional part and may run a bit more.) HydroRight turns your normal toilet into a two-level flush toilet that saves around 15,000 gallons of water a year. That saving is good for the planet and great for lowering monthly water bills. Best of all, it really works.

Finally, did you know that shoes prevent many diseases in poor children, so give shoes to your loved ones—specifically Toms Shoes. Besides being inexpensive and comfortable, the company gives away a pair of shoes for every pair purchased to poor children across the planet. They’re cool, Cameron Diaz and Demi Moore like them, comfortable, available for men, women and children and Toms just gave away the millionth pair.

I hope this list inspires you to look a bit further than the standard mall gift. There are some pretty amazing possibilities out there that won’t put you in hock.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

C’mon, guys. What else would today be about?

Scott Johnson said, “A bad day at work is better than a good day in hell.” If you don’t agree, ask any of the thousands of people who are there because they don’t have and can’t find a job.

And on a day dedicated to the working stiffs, management should take to heart the words of Henry George, “Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over,” before finding yet more ways to reduce their compensation.

Thomas Geoghegan explains succinctly why unions aren’t organizing the way they used to, “When people ask me, ‘Why can’t labor organize the way it did in the thirties?’ the answer is simple: everything we did then is now illegal,” as are many other actions from that era.

Everybody works hard these days, whether they sweat or not. Victor Hugo understood that when he said, “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.”

Samuel Gompers offers two insightful comments.

The first recognizes that labor knows boundaries.

“All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day . . . is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

The second seems to me to apply to any thinking human, not just those designated ‘labor’.

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

Finally, Elbert Hubbard offers some profound advice to all those who run flat out 24/7, “The man who doesn’t relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on.”

I hope you take his words to heart, unplug and hoot a bit this weekend.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/4661655797/