Twenty-Fourth of July Season

Since this is my blog, I can geek out about whatever I want, and no one can complain, right? It's not like anyone's required to read. And, of course, the topic I'm most likely to geek out about is holidays.

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of when I added Pioneer Day to my canon of formally celebrated holidays. Ten years later, I have become the leading expert on the holiday, though I'm still trying to get the word out. Even without my research on the holiday specifically, it's still very much part of my career. This week my supervisor told our assistant director that I know more nineteenth-century LDS history than anyone else in our division, which was surprising but probably accurate.

I observe the Pioneer Day season July 5–July 24, but sometimes I wonder if I should? It's not celebrated outside Utah, and even many in Utah do not observe it. The displacement of Indigenous peoples is a real concern, and I get uncomfortable when people use the holiday to bring purely religious themes (such as temples) into a civic setting.

But if I stopped observing Pioneer Day, I would be left with nothing at this time of year. And July isn't the greatest time of year.

Non-Holiday July

July is the hottest month of the year, which often makes it too hot to trail run. I swam with the recreational swim team again this week, which I usually reserve for the winter. And even when I do get to go trail running, it doesn't have as many wildflowers as May and June or the beautiful leaves of September and October. 

Yes, it's pretty, but so much is dried out

I like fireweed (purplish flowers), but it's not as cool as May's flowers.

July used to be when I would pick apricots, but our apricot tree died four years ago. However, this year I discovered that we have a fruit-bearing currant bush in our yard, so I picked currants and made currant bread. That was fun, but currants don't yield a lot for the work that goes into picking them. 

Summerween

Without Pioneer Day, there's not a fun holiday clear until Halloween. (Labor Day is in early September, but it's not exactly a "fun" holiday.) And that makes people anxious for a holiday that is more than three months away. When I was ten years old, I put up Halloween decorations in my bedroom on July 5. I wait now until mid-September, though I still like to review new Halloween candy for The Impulsive Buy.

Last year, there was news coverage about Summerween. Christmas in July has been a thing for decades and decades, but Summerween has become a new rival. This might have been inspired partly by the Disney series Gravity Falls. Since Gravity Falls takes place in the summer, the series' Halloween episode had to change the setting: The town of Gravity Falls loves Halloween so much they celebrate twice, and Summerween is just like Halloween except they carve watermelons instead of pumpkins. (I did that in 2013.)

I was surprised to go to Walmart and see them fully embracing Summerween, which they call "Summer Frights." Since fireworks are legal for Pioneer Day, it was weird to see fireworks next to skulls. Some of the items were just spooky, while some explicitly combined summer and spooky, such as sunbathing ghosts and jack-o'-lanterns made of watermelons and pineapples.

I'm not sure how I feel about it, because we can't even pretend it's fall when it's nearly 100 degrees. I suppose that's why they lean into the summer aspect.

Since 2022, Lee Mendelson Film Productions has been releasing the long-lost soundtracks for Charlie Brown specials, and I have been collecting all of them on CD. Last week I got my copy of You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown. (It's probably Vince Guaraldi's weakest soundtrack, thanks to heavy use of a 1970s synthesizer.) I'm surprised they released it at this time of year, because it very clearly takes place in the fall. There's a scene where Linus and Sally are in a pumpkin patch to find a pumpkin to replace Charlie Brown's broken helmet, and the music plays "The Great Pumpkin Waltz"—another version to put in my Halloween playlist.

It's good we have the Twenty-Fourth to keep Halloween at bay a little longer.

Pioneer Day Season

As I reviewed my research notes and read a listing of 2025 Pioneer Day activities, it is undeniable that it is an established Utah tradition, and it remains so. Just this afternoon I heard a Spotify advertisement for Larkin Mortuary about Pioneer Day. When I was a kid, I remember a car wash that put "Pioneer children sang as they washed and washed and washed" on their marquee.😆 

So what does the Pioneer Day season look like for me?

Well, of course I'm all about the food. 

Last week I went to Other Side Donuts, which donates its proceeds towards helping the homeless population. I had a beehive donut. Though it's a work of art, I actually didn't think it tasted great, especially with the hot honey topping. But I did love the pink lemonade donut. (Lemonade and ice cream have been traditional Fourth and Twenty-Fourth of July treats since at least the late nineteenth century.)

Saltwater taffy is always thrown out at Pioneer Day parades, and we have at least two major taffy companies based in SLC. (I always think it's funny when I go to tourist spots in other parts of the country, and they sell souvenir taffy with Taffy Town wrappers, which is made in Utah.) Last week I made these sugar cookies with taffy filling. They were OK.

The Twenty-Fourth has been celebrated identically to the Fourth since its beginnings in 1849, so if I miss out on red, white, and blue before the Fourth, I get twenty extra days.

I eat ice cream made in Utah during this season, and I went to three different ice cream shops this week. When I went to Rockwell Ice Cream, I also bought some candies made by Startup Candy Company. "Startup" is the surname of the founder. It's based in American Fork, but it began in England in the 1820s, and the son was an 1868 pioneer and brought it to Utah. So it's totally appropriate for Pioneer Day. Hard candy isn't an exciting thing, but I do think it's exciting to have a Utah company that's more than two hundred years old!

Speaking of Summerween, here's Startup pumpkin spice drops. 7/10.

I have various albums about pioneers and Utah history, which I put in my Pioneer Day playlist. In 1997, there were lots of pioneer commemorations for the sesquicentennial. Over the last three years, I have found three separate CDs from 1997 at DI. (They're not great.) When I worked at This Is the Place, the park's playlist (which they broadcast throughout the village) had a song about "The Boys of Sanpete County." I looked for it online, and it turned out to be on another 1997 CD. It's not available for streaming, but I bought it on eBay, and there are several tracks used at This Is the Place. That's been fun nostalgia, even though I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

And I am happy we have the Twenty-Fourth of July! I just think it's wonderful that we get twenty extra days of festivities after the Fourth. The holiday has problems, to be sure, but so does every holiday. If there are problems, we should look to address or fix them, not throw the holiday out completely.