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Super Sunday: The Best Excuse To Party by Gary Mihoces (USA Today)

Posted by Ed and Lois

JACKSONVILLE — Ready, set, dip your chips. An avocado industry group projects 43.8 million pounds of the fruit will be eaten during Super Bowl XXXIX — most in the form of creamy guacamole.
Super Sunday will be the No. 1 day of the year for consumption of Hass avocados, the primary variety marketed in the USA, according to Liz Wilkins, spokeswoman for the Hass Avocado Board.

Think of Alltel Stadium, site of this year’s game between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, as one big party bowl.

Most won’t be devoured here. It will be scooped at parties large and small in homes and gathering places where Super Sunday has become a ritualized, midwinter break — a perfect excuse to party.

Crunch these numbers from a National Retail Federation survey: 21.5 million people will throw Super Bowl bashes, 9.9 million will party at restaurants and bars and consumers who plan to watch the game will spend an average of $49.27 (or $5.6 billion total) on Super Bowl-related items from food and drink to new TV sets, lounge chairs and entertainment centers.

The buffet table is full of theories on why the Super Bowl makes us reach out for friends, family, hot sausages and cold beverages: perfect seasonal timing when not much else is going on, everybody else is watching, TV ads that always create buzz, the halftime shows (spiced last year by Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”), a national urge to escape the stress of current times and more.

“Super Bowl has evolved probably really in the last decade. It is almost a national holiday. It’s not a national holiday, but it’s a national event,” says Rachel Bolton, spokeswoman for Hallmark Cards, which monitors holiday and celebratory trends and markets a line of Super Bowl partyware.

“It’s a perfect chance to blow off steam,” Bolton adds. “There’s kind a letdown after Christmas and the holidays. ... There was a need, and it all worked together. It became a cultural icon. Everybody knows what it is.”

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