Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent- The Monday after the Super Bowl should not be named a national holiday because Americans have enough holidays to keep them out of work for an extra day or two as it is, but that won’t stop food companies like Kraft /Heinz from attempting through an advertising ploy for their food products . They have planned on letting their salaried employees off the day after Super Bowl LI, February 6, 2017.

Kraft Heinz is promoting the holiday as they believe that no one likes to go to work the day after the Super Bowl, and the company is trying its best to honor the wishes of many with a petition that has been dubbed the “Smunday” along with a short video promoting the petition.

There are other suggestions that abound concerning the day after the Super Bowl being named a holiday and some are suggesting that the game should be moved to President’s Day weekend or some other day that coincides as much as possible with the end of the playoff games and the professional football season.

Heinz and others can continue to petition and lobby for another holiday on the ever expanding holiday calendar because no one likes going to work the day after the Super Bowl, but that is really not the reason for a holiday to be declared. Just because Super Bowl partiers get drunk, eat too much and stay up all night is no reason for them to have the following Monday off from work, even though other groups besides Kraft/Heinz have petitioned for the holiday to be recognized because the Super Bowl is “the most popular event in modern American culture.

Lots of Americans think there should be more important holidays to reflect on and hold dear, whether religious, secular or otherwise. Pearl Harbor Day should be a holiday in recognition of what happened that day as should September 11th and November 22th, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, or the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon as well as the General Election, which falls the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Where do you draw the line when it comes to determining what day should or should not be a holiday?

Holiday declarations are all about money and political circumstances, and Congress is the only body that has the power to declare a federal holiday. What else is new? Congressional Research Services reported back in 1999 that federal holidays cost taxpayers about $200 million a day, and that has only escalated in the years that followed. The expense is what stops a lot of holiday proposals, but maybe the one way to change that is to celebrate a proposed holiday at the state level first. That’s what happened with Columbus Day and Martin Luther King’s birthday. Both were celebrated in a number of states before Congress made them official holidays.

Maybe if states start a Super Bowl “Smunday” holiday effort, the Congress will follow suit and Kraft/Heinz won’t have to petition anyone. It remains to be seen as the right political circumstances, the money angle and the whim of the moment will determine whether the holiday will materialize. Holiday declarations can become seriously charged issues in today’s wacky world.

Gastonia, NC Correspondent- Every week during the course of my news editing shifts, I come across at least one story that, the first time I read it, I know I’ll be seeing it a dozen more times as it’s picked up by other outlets around the country. This week, that story was Heinz Co. starting a Change.org petition to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. The ketchup funsters even came up with a name: Smunday.

You remember Change.org, right? That’s the online petition site that’s hosted signups for everything from getting Justin Bieber deported to Canada to making tofu mandatory in school lunches. No matter what your lunatic fringe idea might be, thanks to the magic of the internet, you can find other basement-dwelling, tinfoil hat-wearing malcontents who share your demented worldview and who will sign on behalf of themselves and their imaginary friends.

That’s why the Heinz petition needs our support. Finally, there’s something that real people can get behind, something that every man who’s ever had the alarm go off an hour after the post-Super Bowl poker game ended can fully support. By giving American workers the Monday after the Super Bowl off, we’ll not only increase worker satisfaction, but we’ll dramatically increase the sales of beer, liquor, snacks and mixers. With no reason to stop because “I have to get up for work in the morning,” that sweaty guy in the Patriots T-shirt with “Brady” misspelled on the back can just keep popping cans and scarfing Doritos well into the wee hours.

Instead of creating holidays around when someone dies, let’s get together and make a holiday for those who are still alive and kicking … at least until their wives find out how much they spent on scotch and discover that the living room sofa was “tackled” a few too many times.

Owatonna, MN Correspondent– My initial reaction to the question was, “Of course not, it’s only a sporting event.” But after reflecting about all the holidays people celebrate around the world, I began to think, “Why not?” But then I realized there is a big difference between a national, or Federal holiday, and the garden variety holidays that aren’t as revered or entitle anyone to days off from work.

Establishing Super Bowl Monday as a full-blown holiday on a par with national holidays like Labor Day, the Fourth of July, or Memorial Day is a stretch because those holidays honor either a group of people or a major historical event. To elevate a sporting event to that status, despite its massive popularity, would do a disservice to the solemnity of the other national holidays that honor individuals, groups, or historical events. But making it a “minor” holiday like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, without the attendant mandatory day off for Federal employees, could be a compromise solution.

Allowing individual states to make that decision is even more reasonable. A football-crazy state like Texas might embrace the concept. Another state with less football tradition and interest—say, Alaska—might choose to save its money and not go along. Even though the Super Bowl is the second-most-watched sporting event in the world (number one being the World Cup of soccer), there are still millions of Americans who don’t watch the Super Bowl and aren’t football fans. All Americans have in common our history and leaders from the past who did great or heroic deeds, but not all of us have football in common.

If the Super Bowl is to become a national holiday, the day of the actual game should be the holiday, not the Monday after. The only good reason to make it a Monday holiday is to keep millions of hungover football fans out of their cars and off the roads on Monday morning. And that’s not much of a reason.