by Mike Anderson

This is an older article salvaged from the old GamerDad.com

Who better for a new holiday than the famed gaming duo?January 7th was Mario & Luigi Day in our house. It was also take down the Christmas decorations’ day, but that was a mere sideline to the real show.

This special holiday was invented by our younger son Christopher – also known as ‘Luigi’! They had just finished some time on the GameCube, and he thought there ought to be a special day to recognize how much fun the pair brings to kids everywhere. This isn’t as spontaneous as it sounds – he spends a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. Last August he came up with his first new holiday – New World Day – which was a celebration of the special worlds kids create in their imagination; a day to share and celebrate those worlds. He had been thinking that Mario & Luigi needed special recognition for some time … but this was the day it came to fruition!

Here are some of the features:

• On this day, you choose whether to dress up as Mario or Luigi. You can simply pretend to look like them, or you can decorate your clothes and go full out with a moustache and everything!
• How do you decide who to be? In our case, our older son has always been more into playing video games, and the first with a Mario-themed game (Mario & Luigi SuperStar Saga for the GBA). So he wanted to be Mario. This was perfect, because ever since they got Luigi’s Mansion he has identified strongly with Luigi ﾖ seeing him walk around the mansion afraid of everything reminded him of going upstairs alone in the dark.
• You also need to act like them. This involves jumping around, speaking like they do and possibly battling ‘Boos’ and ghosts if you happen to be Luigi. Of course, you need a Kart! Mario Kart Double Dash has been a favorite for some time, and with the father-son matches of Mario Kart DS it has made a strong resurgence.

So what happened in our house on Mario & Luigi Day?

• So what happened in our house on Mario & Luigi Day? First off, they had to decide how they would make their costumes. They spent some time digging through their drawers and closets to find something they thought was fitting that also met with our requirement that they be ready to go out into the sub-freezing temperatures to needed. They found something acceptable, and then got ready for decorating.
• We had purged their closets, so they only had red baseball hats left. Our older son is ﾑthe artist’, so he took charge of making the labels for the hats and shirts … and the stars, of course. Because what is a competition between Mario & Luigi if you can’t win stars?!?
• Their first series of contests involved the Christmas tree. They started with a race to see who could get more candy canes off the tree, and when they finished counting ﾑMario’ celebrated while ﾑLuigi’ lamented. The next race was to collect a certain shape of ornament, and this time ﾑLuigi’ got to celebrate.
• Then the boys decorated their beanbag chairs too look like Mario Kart racers, and began having a competition in the living room (until they got kicked out so we could finish taking down the Christmas tree)!
• As the sun started to go down, they turned off all of the lights upstairs and converted the light source from their new ﾑUltimate Lightsaber’ kits to flashlights and played some ﾑLuigi’s Mansion’. This would have gone better if they had mentioned what they were doing before a blood-curdling scream brought us running up the stairs in a panic, only to find Mario & Luigi rolling on the floor laughing!

So the last question I posed to my son – why Mario & Luigi? The answer surprised me, because it was all about sportsmanship rather than gaming. He said ﾖ because they always try their best and are sad when they lose, but keep trying. They are happy when they win, but never make fun of the loser. They have fun with whatever game they play and are always ready for more.

Tags: Misc