People are going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on my favorite holiday, but it’s not Christmas or Chanukah. People dress up and drink heavily on my favorite holiday, but it’s not Halloween, or St. Paddy’s Day. There is a spike in birth rates nine months in the wake of my favorite holiday, but it’s not Valentines Day.
My favorite holiday is one month long, is celebrated by all different kinds of people, and couldn’t be more inclusive. There’s no sort of religious connotation attached, even though some people worship and celebrate like their lives depend on it. In fact, the powers that be want so many different kinds of people to participate, they’ve seen fit to move the ceremonies to a different country every time it rolls around in the calendar.
The absolute worst thing about my favorite holiday? It only comes once every four years.
This summer, Brazil will play in and host the 2014 edition of the FIFA World Cup, and I for one could not be more excited. For as long as I can remember, the World Cup was a fixture in my home. Even when I was a kid, my dad would make sure I was awake for the first games of the day, waffles and orange juice on the counter at 7:30 a.m. sharp.
Despite my best efforts, I was never a terribly gifted athlete, but watching the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Christian Vieri take the field was enough to make any skinny kid run out to his local park after a game to kick around with his friends. My love for this event wasn’t even about the sport itself. In my early days, the game on this large of a stage seemed to be the only time on television where I saw all different types of people congregating to enjoy a common interest.
As a child growing up in Vermont, there was limited diversity. Seeing Swedes and Senegalese, Germans and Paraguayans, and Koreans and Mexicans all together enjoying the most popular sport in the world was something special. Watching the 2002 Cup and seeing so many cultures come together was poignantly refreshing, considering that only a year earlier, my eight-year-old self had tried to figure out why anyone halfway across the world would ever fly planes into buildings.
Posting up in front of my television every day in 2010 was something special. I was just old enough to really begin to understand the politics behind FIFA tournament selection and preparation. I had done a decent job of keeping up with how South Africa was gearing up to host. The usual problems were present in the run up to the big month. Would the infrastructure hold up? Would the stadiums be ready on time? Lo and behold, they pulled it off and hosted the very first World Cup held on African soil. The excitement was genuinely palpable. You could see it in every face around the stadium. Each country in Africa was proud to be hosting the world game, not just those on the Horn. And you know what? They did a hell of a job.
It’s for reasons like these that I value the World Cup so highly, not because of the soccer on its own, not because of the specialty burgers at McDonald’s, not even because I’ll get to watch Clint Dempsey and his face strike fear into the hearts of his opponents, but because every World Cup game is 90 minutes where the whole world stops and bears witness to one thing that needs virtually no explaining. One ball. Two nets. A single goal: win.
That’s not to say that a host of problems don’t plague a World Cup. It’s an international tournament and, therefore, international problems are inevitably going to play out in its wake. I’d be surprised if fans trying to attend games in Rio weren’t met with hordes of protesters fighting against government corruption, poor public services, and heavy investment in international sporting events. I’d be surprised if, in the run up to the World Cup in Qatar, people weren’t incredibly concerned about the quasi-slave labor being employed to ensure stadiums are built on time. That’s the power of such a tournament. Issues such as these find their way into the eyes of the world thanks to its colossal scale.
These days, there seem to be more and more reasons to be divided as a species. Whether they be race, religion, or what have you, people focus on things that make them different. Despite the tournament being heavily commercialized, it will be good for the millions of people watching to slow down and appreciate the shared love of the beautiful game. Whether it be for 20 seconds, 90 minutes, or the full month, it’s something that doesn’t happen every day.
