Feb. 5 is, if you didn’t already know it, “Move Hollywood & Broadway to Lebanon, Pennsylvania Day.”
Yes, it’s an actual holiday, if not an official national holiday. It was created by Lebanon County residents Tom and Ruth Roy, who over the course of a few decades have invented numerous special days for the calendar-inclined.
“We have lots of room, friendly folks and Amish farms,” the Roys explain on their website to justify the occasion. “Former home office of David Letterman Show, Lebanon is now the safe haven for residents and tourists to serenely indulge in their world famous bologna and the Wertz family homemade candies.”
Read More: How Lebanon became the home office of Late Night with David Letterman
It is one of the sillier of holidays the couple has created, ever since Tom Roy, in 1986, was moved to shout “Hoodie-Hoo” in defiance of winter.
The couple lives in Ebenezer, in North Lebanon Township. Tom, 79, and Ruth, 71, have been married 33 years, and they have earned a degree of global infamy for their holiday-making ways.
“I can’t believe this,” Roy muses. “It’s absolutely silly, but somehow it makes sense.”
Be wary to whom you give the power…
As Tom remembers it, he was glancing through his copy of “Chase’s Calendar of Events,” an annual almanac he used to find interesting dates to mention on his radio show, back in 1986.
“I was the morning man at WIOV, and I was using it for show prep,” he says. “I’d get off the air at 9 and go to my office and work on prep for the next day. So one day I was flipping through it and I saw in the back there was a form where you could submit your own holidays.”
A self-proclaimed “alleged grownup” should never be given that kind of power, he admits. “You’re telling me I could invent my own holiday?”
So, of course, that’s what he did.
“It was February, so I thought ‘What’s going on now that everyone is talking about?’ Well, in February, everyone is wondering when the hell spring is going to get here,” Tom says. “So, how about if every year, on Feb. 20, which is a month away from spring, everyone celebrates by waving a beach blanket at the sun and shouting ‘hoodie-hoo’ twice. It guarantees that warmer weather will arrive eventually.”
It might have ended there, but no — “Chase’s Calendar of Events” included “Northern Hemisphere Hoodie-Hoo Day” in its next edition.
“A year went by, and I never gave it another thought,” Tom says. “Then somebody called me on Feb. 20 and said, ‘Hey, you’re on the front page of USA Today.’ … I started getting calls from other newspapers and television stations. I was like, oh my God, this is getting crazy.”
A ‘hoodie-hoo’ from Paul Harvey
Tom knew he’d started something when Paul Harvey — a revered newscaster with a distinctive broadcast delivery style — ended his noon newscast on Feb. 20 that year by going, “OK everybody, 1-2-3 Hoodie-Hoo! Paul Harvey, good day.”
“I immediately invented eight more holidays,” Tom says. “And they printed all of them. So I submitted another seven or eight the next year.”
Over the next several years, Tom and his wife Ruth kept at it. They mostly came up with silly, irreverent ideas for holidays, such as “What if Cats & Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day” on March 3, “The Slugs Return From Capistrano Day” on May 28, “Wonderful Weirdos Day” on Sept. 9, “International Moment of Frustration Scream Day” on Oct. 12, and “Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day” on Nov. 8.
A few are more serious, such as “Forgive Mom and Dad Day” on March 18, “Family History Day” on June 14, “Remember Freedom Day” on Sept. 11, and “Evaluate Your Life Day” on Oct. 19.
Jan. 3 is “Memento Mori Day,” from the Latin “Memento, mori,” or “Remember, you die.” “We suggest posting the words at home and at work, not to be morbid, but to remind us to cherish all that we have today, for tomorrow may never arrive,” the Roys explain on their website.
To date, Tom told LebTown, “they’ve printed 90 of our holidays.”
Over the years, the Roys have been featured in countless newspaper articles, including the Washington Post, LA Times and Miami Herald. Al Neuharth, founder and publisher of USA Today, also “became a fan of ours over the years because he kept publishing our holidays,” Tom says.
Wait, there’s money to be made?
Notoriety is one thing. What the Roys didn’t expect was cash.
Blue Mountain Arts, a purveyor of printed greeting cards and ecards, was intrigued by the marketing possibilities associated with “Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbors’ Porch Day” on Aug. 8 — recognition, Tom explains, of the fact that many home gardeners plant too much of the stuff and, by August, are looking for ways to get rid of some squash.
Blue Mountain wanted to sell cards for the makeshift holiday, Tom says, and the company offered the Roys $50 — per holiday — for the right to use their creative celebrations.
“They sent me a check for $4,000,” Tom says. “What the hell?”
At about the same time, American Greetings — second only to Hallmark in the greeting card business — started using the Roys’ holidays. Tom contacted them and pointed out the holidays were copyrighted and — after a lawyer got involved, pro bono, to help them see the light — American Greetings too began sending them royalty checks.
And it didn’t stop there. Entenmann’s Bakery paid to use “Eat What You Want Day” (May 11), and Purina chipped in to use “Answer Your Cat’s Question Day” (Jan. 22).
“I don’t know why people would pay me for anything. All they really had to do was cite it,” Tom says. “I even got paid by Willard Scott for ‘Be Bald and Be Free Day’.”
Don’t worry, be happy
For the Roys, the impetus for their holidays is spreading a bit of joy.
“All of our holidays have mirth,” Tom says. And it seems to be working.
“Before the internet, we’d get letters. We have an entire filing cabinet full of letters we got — from air force bases, social directors at old folks’ homes, elementary schools,” he says. “We would also get scores of phone calls on every one of our holidays. It was madness. Then the internet happened … now we’re getting scores of emails from people. They send pictures and videos. A guy used to call us from Missouri. He said, ‘There’s a worldwide hunger for mirth.’ I went ‘bingo.’ That was it.”
Sometimes, the evidence of the happiness they are spreading is uncanny.
“One time a Fox News network in New York called. This was in the early ’90s,” Tom says. “They wanted to do a story on ‘Yell FUDGE at the Cobras in North America Day.’ They sent a film crew down. While they were interviewing me, the phone rings.”
Tom took the call with the camera still rolling. It was man from a retirement home in Maine who wanted to report that the residents there had all gone on a snake hunt through the facility, yelling “fudge” at every turn, and he was happy to report no cobras — no snakes at all, in fact — had been found.
“Thanks for a merry old time,” the man told Tom.
The “other side” of holiday creation is to promote a cause, Ruth adds. For instance, she’d like to see a national holiday enacted by Congress to honor first responders.
“We never asked for any congressional endorsement of our holidays,” she notes. “They’re not official. It’s humor.”
Hey, do I know these folks?
Tom and Ruth Roy are familiar faces to patrons of the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire in Mount Hope, where Tom worked for about 20 years as both an actor and member of the creative team. He’s been a radio news director and talk show host, and he’s acted in films including “12 Monkeys,” “The Answer Man,” and “Night Catches Us.”
Ruth ran the Herb Garden & Apothecary Shoppe at the Ren Faire for many years, a vocation she continues today online at wellcat.com. She has also been a touring actress, college administrator, radio talk show hostess, and morning show personality.
Tom says he’s “mostly retired” these days, feeding the birds, feral cats and raccoons. “I’m at the Cleona post office almost every day,” he good-naturedly grouses, “mailing out her perfumes, her potpourri, her lotions, her catnip-stuffed rats….”
They don’t invent holidays any more, however.
“We were so inundated for phone calls for interviews,” Ruth explains. “It was a wave of people trying to be shock jocks — I’d schedule an interview, and they were just rude. They thought it was funny.
“It used to be fun, but it became a pain.”
Tom says it’s been over a decade since they last submitted a special occasion to the almanac.
“It was enough,” he says. “We did 90 freaking holidays. We don’t need anymore. I could create another 100 easily, but I don’t want to.”
That doesn’t mean LebTown readers can’t put their own creative juices to work.
“One of my holidays is ‘Make Up Your Own Holiday’ Day,” Tom says. It’s on March 26 and, as the Roys’ website explains: “This is a day you may name for whatever you wish. Reach for the stars! Make up a holiday.”
Once you start, he warns, it can become addictive. “You start seeing things differently. You start noticing things.”
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