Some people love Christmas. Other folks burst their seams over Thanksgiving or rave about the Fourth of July.



Then there is Barry Levenson.



"I'm an Elm Farm Ollie kind of guy," he said.



Of course, that probably doesn't mean much to you -- yet. Didn't mean anything to Levenson, either, until he stumbled across Elm Farm Ollie while flipping through "Famous First Facts" in a Wisconsin library in 1981. Levenson, who lives in Madison, was a lawyer then (he's since given up the practice to become curator of the Mustard Museum, in nearby Mount Horeb).



"I saw a listing -- 'First Cow to Fly in an Airplane' -- and said, 'OK, that's cute, but there's got to be more to the story than that,' " Levenson said.



Turns out there was. Through his research, he found that not only did Elm Farm Ollie become the first flying cow, on Feb. 18, 1930, on the same trip she also became the first cow milked in flight.



Naturally, there's more Not satisfied with these feats, the people who milked her put the milk into paper cartons and parachuted them to fans waiting below.



All this took place at the St. Louis International Air Exposition -- "the early days of aviation," Levenson said. "(Flying and milking) Elm Farm Ollie was one of the many firsts they were doing. Let's face it, aeronautics hadn't been around for very long. You could almost guess that anything you did that was odd was going to be first."



And that's where the story ended. Some guys flew a Guernsey in a plane, milked her and parachuted her milk. Weird, but so what? Not the kind of thing you can base a whole holiday on. Levenson wanted a legend. He pressed on, searching for more facts about the flight. He found few, but that didn't stop him.



"In the best tradition of American journalism," he said, "I made up the rest."



Thus, "Bovine Cantata in B flat," part of his lyric opera, "Madame" "Butterfat." It tells the tale of one Farmer Brown, whose farm was about to go under. A couple of shifty salesmen showed up at his door and offered him money for Elm Farm Ollie so that they could fly her in a plane and milk her. Farmer Brown loved the cow but had no choice; he sold her. The men planned to sell the milk at a hefty markup, but as the song says,



Ollie went on to say -- in the song, the cow can talk -- that if the men didn't give the milk to the needy, "I'll make the biggest cow pie that you have ever seen / So follow well my orders or I will be obscene."



Sensibly, they complied.



"I did it in one evening," Levenson said. "It just hit me, 'I have to get this into song.' I just got kind of possessed by Elm Farm Ollie."



Since 1981, people have gathered every Feb. 18 at the Mustard Museum to eat cheeses, drink milk, sing Levenson's song and talk about cows. On a good year, the holiday may draw 200 Ollie enthusiasts, all familiar with the tale.



"People say, 'Is that really the truth?' " Levenson said, then answered "Did George Washington really chop down the cherry tree? Do you really want to know? Is it important if he really did or didn't? It's the story, it's the message."



At this point, you may be wondering what ties this holiday has to Arizona. Certainly, my editors did.



The answer is none.



"And you know, maybe that's the best tie there is," Levenson said. "We can just celebrate the event, the joyousness of a cow helping little children, even if there's little historical basis for it. Who cares? It's an excuse to have fun. And sometimes you need that."



True enough. So eat some cheese today. Lift a glass of milk and toast the first flying bovine.



Or as Harry Caray might say, Holy Cow.Bill Goodykoontz writes for The Arizona Republic. He can be reached at