And about five pages later . . . he lives!

Well, we made it through yesterday. Phew!

National Scrapbook Day, National Fitness Day, National Weather Observers Day, National Orange Juice Day, National Homebrew Day . . . celebrating every single day that the Naitonal Holiday Committee (or whoever comes up with these things) is more exhausting than bailing my lawn, which was how I spent my day.

But, Reichenbach/Star Wars/Free Comic Book Day was also yesterday, making for a geek trifecta as well, but even though Obiwan Kenobi was dead for ten minutes until his Force ghost came back and Superman was dead for about a year once (followed by most other comic book heroes at some point), our old friend Sherlock Holmes still holds the true "Really making everyone know for sure he's dead and then come back a decade later" record.

I mean, even Jesus only made his people wait three days.  But unlike his Easter, Sherlockians don't have a holiday for the day Sherlock Holmes came back. You'd think we'd celebrate that one, but there's a reason for that . . . nobody alive had to wait that ten years. For any modern Sherlockian, all you have to do is turn a few pages to the second half of the book, or stay in the theater or in front of your TV long enough to see Sherlock hiding in a graveyard or disguised as a chair.

May 4 is a weird sort of Sherlockian holiday due to how comfortable we've become with Sherlock Holmes being unkillable. Moriarty wasn't the end of him. Conan Doyle's death wasn't the end of him. So it's hard to get sad over a moment you know was his greatest trick . . . .

. . . unless you're taking the Watsonian point of view. "Happy Ditch Watson For Three Years Day," as it could be called, really puts a yuck spin on it. Or "Happy Running in Fear from a Guy who It Only Took a Wax Dummy to Catch Day." (Did it take three years to make that dummy? Was that the reason?) Our best reason for celebrating May the 4th and shooting off fireworks is one more post-game celebration for Sherlock Holmes laying the smackdown on Professor Moriarty, and that moment when Sherlock stood atop that cliff and went, "SEE! That's what you get for messing with Sherlock Holmes!"

The best thing about May 4th is that Sherlockians all agree on it. Despite the popular notion that Sherlock's birthday happened in January, we still argue for other dates, with good reason. We know who made up the January date and why, reasons that really didn't have anything to do with Sherlock himself. May 4 was a date given to us by John Watson himself, more clearly and plainly than almost any other Watsonian date, and we don't argue that. And it's in early May, truly the best time for celebrating anything in the Northern hemisphere.

So, happy Cinco de Mayo, the Boxing Day of Sherlockiana. Frank Mouton from "Noble Bachelor" was in New Mexico once, so you can still have a margarita for Sherlock Holmes (which makes as much sense as anything else about Americans celebrating May 5th -- Mexico beat France, yay!).

Our holidays are what we make them, so make some good ones, whatever the day is.