The conversation during the holidays invariably comes around to a discussion about why so many people are depressed, angry and otherwise unpleasant during the holidays. For me, it's about always being sick around Thanksgiving. It was so bad that about two years ago, I decided to do a Zen kind of thing and, with the help of zinc, Airborne, sleep aids and Lexapro, psyched myself into not being sick. It lasted one year. This year, I was sick with that nasty phlegm stuff going around Atlanta. For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, I hate you, and go back to you bong pipe for another hit.Holiday seasons are all about family. Because (unofficially) 98% of all American families are dysfunctional, the holidays bring out all kinds of poo poo (medical term) in our psyches. We watch the traditional movies, look through the windows of our neighbors imagining the perfect world they must have with that amber glow of Christmas lights around the tree, and thank God we're not looking through their windows at any other time of year because it would be hard to explain to our spouse why we just got arrested for being a "peeping-Tom".
My favorite time of the year is Christmas. It is the single joyful time of the year I remember of my childhood. The rest is poo poo. For whatever reason, my family put aside the entire logbook of wrongs and rights, and who owes whom what, during that one season. I probably have deluded myself completely about the memories, but hey, leave me alone and let me have one time of the year that I enjoy. Now that everyone in my family is dead save the goldfish, I have evolved. I have a new favorite season.
My favorite season the last few years has been summer. I enjoy summer by the pool for the water, the sun and nude sun-bathing, but I had to bribe my neighbors to sign off on a sun room extension that would partially block their view of the golf course, which in return, entailed my cutting down all the privacy hedges that adjoin our two properties. Unless they're nudists, I have lost my freedom of exposure. Life is all about trade-offs.
Holidays are apparently the place where all things emotional come to rest for the winter. All of our childhood hopes and dreams come crashing into the reality of the putz we married and the job we hate. So, after a glass of wine and a Hallmark Hall of Fame tear-jerker, we are convinced that we are the only person on the planet cursed with a psychotic family, lousy spouse, ungrateful children and the luck of the Polish. Deep down, there is the undercurrent of how-in-the-hell-am-I-going-to-pay-for-these-presents depression, followed by the let-down of discovering that the Christmas list that you painstakingly wrote down and emailed to your family apparently ended up in Heidelberg, Germany, where Gretchen Gundenberger of Munich is now working out in your exercise clothes and listening to your "I hate Men" music on her ipod.
I will leave the religious significance to those better qualified but other than that, the Christmas holidays are a celebration of all things consumer. We all have heartfelt desires to love and be loved but being honest, we want to hit the mother-lode monetarily at Christmas. If we don't get what we want, we smile and then go pout in our rooms and secretly plot to have certain members of our family murdered. I really think that Christmas, after the one hour we spend being reverent for our faith, should be spent in Vegas. There is where we could have the most fun, lose the less interesting of our family members among the slot machines, and finally, stand the highest chance of reaping the kind of financial gain we covet for ourselves.
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