Martin Luther King Jr. Day is relatively new, and is not widely awarded as a day off yet. However, unlike other days named for individuals, it still carries some reverence, and it might be a bit of bad PR after having the first two African-American coaches in Super Bowl to impose on the holiday of the man who fought the battles that led this achievement.

Although now that American Mattress broke through the taste barrier by having an MLK Day sale (buy a king-sized mattress for the price of a queen — get it?), soon we will see car dealers dressing up as King declaring, “I have a dream — to clear my inventory of Chevys!” Or department stores adjusting their “white sales” so that little white linens and little black linens can go out the door together for one low price. But that day has not yet come, so Martin Luther King Jr. Day stays.

Presidents’ Day seems important, what with it being for presidents and all. But this holiday is like declaring every religion with a holiday in December will celebrate Christmas. We had Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday near each other, but they merged into generic “Presidents’ Day” when it became clear the people who want everything memorialized for Ronald Reagan were going to get him naming rights as well. Past the third grade, is anyone having some sort of Presidential celebration? Or having a reverent observance of the accomplishments of, say, Martin Van Buren?

So let’s take the Monday we don’t celebrate presidents and use it to give us as a nation time to reflect and relax on the accomplishments of the winning quarterback, or winning beer commercial, or nipple shown or not shown.

Now that we’ve poached a holiday, we need one more thing to happen to make the Super Bowl an official holiday weekend. We need the NFL to ease up on enforcing Super Bowl licensing.

After all, it would be hard to have a national Super Bowl holiday if we weren’t allowed to use the words “Super Bowl,” like all those advertisements for big-screen TV sales that refer to buying a plasma set before the “Big Game.” With all the talk about the Big Game, it sounds America is preparing for a safari.

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The NFL will still make plenty of money off the Super Bowl. Maybe it can restrict licensing to items with an officially designated Super Bowl logo, and let the words “Super” and “Bowl” roam freely. Really, NFL, wouldn’t it be enough that your game was just elevated to an official holiday? (Based on past experience, that answer would be, “No.”)

I realize I’m dreaming that anyone beyond the operators of the Superbowlmonday.com web site will seriously push to make our national game another of our national holidays. But if the people who run Heritage Christian School, whose parents are probably not celebrating with keg stands, can realize it’s a waste of time to expect anything to be accomplished the day after a Super Bowl, then why should we as a nation pretend any differently?