You don’t need a holiday to throw a small party. Finished a tough week? That’s the occasion.

Celebration has been handed over to a calendar somebody else wrote. Birthdays, holidays, the officially sanctioned occasions, and everything else goes unmarked, including most of what was actually difficult to do. Finishing a hard week is a real event. It simply has no date attached, so it passes with nobody noticing.

Mark one thing yourself this month. Nothing elaborate, just food and two or three people and a reason said out loud. Saying what you are marking is most of the point, because an occasion only exists once somebody names it.