MONTREAL, Oct. 15 People in Canada were encouraged to grouse, grumble and generally be ornery Monday to "celebrate" National Grouch Day.
Experts say there's good reason to celebrate the gloomy rain clouds of life, even for only one day, The (Montreal) Gazette reported Monday.
"When you look at the complexity of modern everyday life, the temptation is to be completely cynical," said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. "Yet most of us, for whatever reason ... generally don't feel comfortable expressing that disdain all the time. So in some ways, the grouch is the cultural mercenary we hire to say all the things we are thinking."
Canadians of a certain age were introduced to the glories of grumpiness by the king himself: Oscar the Grouch, the trash-can dweller on "Sesame Street." In fact, Oscar inspired National Grouch Day.
"The (Sesame Street) characters could be viewed as deliberate attempts to foster appreciations for different types of personalities in real life," said Richard Graham, chairman of the children's TV division of the U.S.-based Popular Culture Association.
Copyright 2007 by UPI
