HoHoHo

Christmas Day, 2012.  I'd say Happy Holidays but I'd piss off the traditional folks.  But if I say Merry Christmas then the secular humanists are going to be all over me.  I'm screwed.  I'm always getting screwed.  The world is against me, the cards are stacked against me, everyone hates me, guess I'll eat some worms.

If today is a great day for you, rock on.  There are a lot of people who really enjoy the holidays and I say bully, bully.  There are families who get along well and people who like to shop and decorate and all that crap.  Certainly the intent behind this holiday - ironically on a date that has more to do with trying to bamboozle ancient pagans into buying into a new religion than anything else - is wonderful.  Giving gifts, thinking of others, let's go wassailing and all kinds of other things that don't usually happen is hard to argue with.

But if you think today is a great big pain in the ass, rest assured that you're not alone.  There are a lot of expectations.  There is a lot of money spent.  There are a lot of people around who you may not spend much time with, and often for good reasons.  It's easy to be overwhelmed and disappointed.  I used to quote the statistic that more people commit suicide around the holidays than any other time of the year until I found out it wasn't true.

As Jon Stewart said, and I'm paraphrasing: "Ah, the holidays.  When you have a 4 hour meal with your in-laws who you only see once a year.  What could go wrong with that?"

The best Christmas SuperK and I ever had was the first time we put some serious distance between my family and ourselves.  We were in New Orleans.  When I pulled into the hotel I asked the bell hop if any restaurants were open on Christmas.  The Old City was very religious and traditional and almost everything was closed.

He looked at me strangely:  "They're all open," he said.

SuperK and I had gumbo and a couple of dozen raw oysters drenched in horseradish and hot sauce for our meal.

Priceless.