Here Come the Holidays. (Oh, Oh.)
Suddenly the world smells like pumpkin spice.
The calendar flips to October and…incoming!…the holidays have arrived, whether you wanted them to or not. Costco is already piping in “Jingle Bell Rock” before you even had the chance to scrub the “feel good hit of the summer” from your ears. The holidays are also where every commercial promises that this is the year your family will transform into something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Spoiler alert: it won’t.
For me, the holidays are less about joy and more about surviving a gauntlet of forced cheer, awkward social obligations, and food comas that could drop a rhino. But let’s take them one at a time, shall we?
When the Masks Come Off, It’s Just Us Again
Ah, Halloween. The one night of the year when parents march their sugar-amped progeny door-to-door like tiny racketeers shaking down the neighborhood for candy. Back in the day, it was about good-natured scares and maybe a little illicit fun like smashing pumpkins. (Not the band, the gourds.) Now it’s $90 costumes from Spirit Halloween and pumpkin-shaped buckets filled with “fun size” diabetes.
Adults aren’t spared either. Right around the fifty-year mark, Halloween mutates into either a) an excuse for midlife cosplaying while slurring your words through five margaritas and plastic vampire teeth, or b) barricading yourself in the dark like a fugitive, TV on mute, praying the doorbell doesn’t ring. Either way, is it fun? Maybe. Is it dignified? Never.
Pass the Gravy. And the Xanax.
Thanksgiving is where America pretends to love each other for a day, usually over a 20-pound turkey that everyone secretly agrees is the least exciting part of the meal. Let’s be honest: it’s all about the sides. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, the odd side dish no one asked for but somehow always appears like an uninvited neighbor. And yet, the main course isn’t the food, it’s family. Like your half-drunk uncle who unloads half-baked conspiracy theories through a mouthful of yams, reminding you why you only see him once every 364 days.
Between the heavy food, the oh-so-delightful familial tension, and the forced watching of the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys play again, Thanksgiving is a recipe for GERD of epic proportions. Whatever happens, though, you smile. You pass the rolls. You pass the gravy, which there is never enough of. And you pass the time with small talk, waiting for the moment you can sneak off to the kitchen with your cool cousin to “check on the pies” – code for uncorking another bottle of wine.
Decking the Halls and Losing Our Minds
By the time December rolls around, you’re already exhausted. Christmas looms like a tinsel-covered freight train of obligation barreling toward your sanity. And your liver. The season drips with “cheer.” Mall parking lots transform into combat zones. Amazon trucks buzz through neighborhoods like a battalion of Panzers, dropping off boxes of crap that will be forgotten by January.
And then there’s the music. God help us all. I swear, if I hear “Little Drummer Boy” pa-rum-pum-pumming one more fucking time, I’m going all Samuel L. Jackson right there in the deodorant aisle at CVS.
Okay, I admit, maybe I’m being a bit harsh. I mean, sure, there are twinkly lights, beautifully wrapped gifts, and even some magical moments with the kids. But there are also maxed-out credit cards, limp office parties, and the realization that you’ll probably spend Christmas Day with the same people you just spent Thanksgiving with.
The Ball Drops and So Do Our Standards
Mercifully we arrive at year’s end — New Year’s Eve. The night where you either get hammered in an overpriced bar and shout-count backwards from ten. Or watch the ball drop in Times Square (9:00 Pacific Standard Time) and then hit the sack. (Bor-ing.) It’s funny. People pretend like the stroke of midnight – or nine — has some sort of mystical power that wipes clean the mess of the last twelve months. It doesn’t.
Next morning: if you did it right, you wake up in your clothes, with a savage hangover, sporting a guacamole stain shaped uncannily like Mexico, and the understanding that your New Year’s resolutions will be dead by the end of the week. Gyms will be crowded for about six days. And then, by February, it’s all back to normal. Same vices, same habits, same people pretending next year will somehow be different.
And Yet…
There’s something perversely comforting in the whole ritual we call “the holidays.” That’s the secret truth about this time of year. We eat. We drink. We clink glasses. We say hello to strangers. We hug our loved ones, even people we don’t love.
More importantly, we cheer each other on because, against all odds, we made it through another year. And really, that’s the best you can say about the holidays in modern-day America — you survived them.
