With No Festivals & College Football This Is An Different Type Of Three-Day Holiday In The USA
As I write this, I should be building up excitement for a three-day holiday weekend that involves a local eating and drinking festival as most of all, the kickoff of the college football season with a key game between Alabama and USC.
Instead, there is none of those things because this is the COVID-19 year and the pandemic has canceled nearly every single activity across the USA as well as the world.
So Labor Day Weekend 2020 will be remembered more for what didn’t happen than for what did take place.
Let’s start with the festivals. Cities and towns across America have local events that feature arts and crafts booths, food vendors, bands and beer gardens. It’s a first-weekened-in-September ritual, as much a part of the American culture as
Speaking of American culture, Labor Day Weekend also marks the start of the college football season. And while there are some games this weekend there are no marquee matchups like Alabama-USC, two tradition-rich powers that this year could have been a game to determine and early national championship contender. It could also have been a game that sent one coach to the permanent sidelines.
But heck, USC isn’t even playing football this fall. Being in the Pac-12, it’s one of the two major conferences that is sitting out the season, the rudderless Big 10 being the other. So instead of the likes of the Tide and the Trojans, this weekend all we have is a lot of directional schools playing: Eastern Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, North Texas… The weekend’s highlight game? BYU at Navy on Labor Day – hey we’ve heard of those teams!
So with no festivals or football, this is definitely a different kind of three-day holiday in the USA.
kevinwilkerson says
So true and those of you in the hospitality industry are really suffering.
Alex says
This year was definitely hard and different for everyone, visitors, and all of us in the hospitality industry.