Unfortunately, while January is still freaking cold and an excuse to be geeky is always welcome, the proposed holiday was indelibly associated with Ctrl-Alt-Delete and Tim Buckley who, as an avid reader of Penny-Arcade and Player vs Player, I am inclined to think of as a Jerk (capital J intentional).
This said, it's still freaking cold in January and a celebration of all the things one can do without having to leave the comfort of your home is still worthwhile. For me this time of year has primarily consisted of wearing video game related t-shirts, bringing video game controllers to work and trading in a few hours when I should be sleeping for a few extra hours of gaming.
In 2007 Scott Kurtz's series of Wintereenmas lampooning "Pixmas" strips pointed out that gamers already spend too much time being gamers... it's not like we're not spending multiple hours a day playing video games and wearing gamer shirts the rest of the year... so making up an reason to do so but more so was essentially a slacker wanting an excuse to get out of working... and I'm not sure if he meant it as social commentary but, by concocting the "Newbish" as a group of people who like the idea of celebrating gaming but not Pixmas itself and "Pwonzaa" as a competing gamer holiday in the same time-frame, he shows us that there are many roads to geekery. We don't all play the same games in the same ways.
Also, the name "Wintereenmas" sounds like a made up competitor of Christmas for non-christians instead of anything video game related.
While, yes, I'll grant that making up excuses to celebrate being a geek is a little self-indulgent; I still like the idea of celebrating geekery and I like the idea of doing so in the awful "dead of winter".
So, the last week of January, in the proud tradition of the christians co-opting solstice and other various holidays when they picked a date for Christmas and African Americans co-opting the Christmas season so they could celebrate their heritage with Kwanzaa... I think it's probably OK for me to decide that the last week of January each year I will celebrate "Platform Agnostic January Geek Celebration" and make up whatever traditions I feel like.
First off, this celebration is like a "module" that you can affix to whatever religion or lack-there-of belief or lack-there-of system or lack-there-of you ascribe or fail-to-ascribe to. If you happen to believe in a creator you might decide to thank god for creating video games and comic books and polyhedral dice. If you happen to ascribe to a belief system that is already expressly geeky (perhaps you attend the Church of Tetris, put Jedi on your census form, or worship Bahamut or Boccob [thanks Wikipedia]) then you might use it as an opportunity to introduce those around you to your particular brand of geekery.
Second, you can celebrate in whatever way you want. Personally I like to incorporate role and board gaming along with video games and tend to skew towards celebrating the history of gaming. Perhaps you just want to take the week off from work and play an MMORPG or build a transistor radio or code a video game or read Ender's Game or Snowcrash again... it doesn't really matter how you celebrate... well... as long as it it geeky.
The third thing that I think is important is to be public about being a Geek... wear your geek clothes... bring your transformers or legos or hero-clix to work... post on your social networks... spread the word that being a geek is awesome. If people already know you are a geek you might need to step up your game to make sure people notice that something is different about this week from all others.
So, paragraphs of useless ramblings later I ask you to share your ideas on what could be fun to do this PAJGC (pahdjuguk) Season and Merry PAJGC!
