Why celebrate?

Most people celebrate things having to do with their religion, monetary status, relationship and rarely achievement. As an acedemic celebrating monetary success would be silly and I certainly have no desire to celebrate religious events (although I don't mind attending to see friends and relatives). My wife and I rarely celebrate our relationship on marked days (V-day or anniversaries) , most evident since we passed our 10 year anniversary and neither of us noticed until 2 days later. We prefer to celebrate when the mood strikes.

But what we do celebrate is achievement. In fact I've developed a rather odd celebration for my minor but satisfying achievements: giving the dog a treat. It seems odd, but to keep her in good health she rarely gets soft treats, but when I get a program working, find a code bug and fix it or make a small discovery the first thing I do is excite the dog and give her a treat. Often this will be followed by a celebration with my wife. It may seem odd but when you succeed you tend to want to share your success and the simplest way to start, for me, is to make the dog ecstatic!