t0dd.net

The secret to de-stressing your holidays

by todd on 11/05/09 at 2:11 pm

You know how holidays are. The entire family coming together for fun and togetherness at predetermined times throughout the year. That’s the good part. The bad part is the pre-determined times thing. That means everyone across America is doing the same thing on the same day and that’s just not cool. You ever try to drive on the Wednesday before or Sunday after Thanksgiving? How about getting a dinner reservation on Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day? Even if you do get a dinner reservation, eating out on those insanely busy nights is never a good idea. Not a good idea unless limited, overpriced holiday menus and the general feeling from the waitstaff of “eat and get the hell out, dammit” floats your boat. If that sort of thing makes you happy you can probably just stop reading now, there is no hope for you. For the rest of you I’m going to hip you to a little secret that’s helped my family out quite a bit.

Pick a more convenient day to celebrate the holiday for you and your family

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking …

Fallacy: “Todd, you crazy bastard, you can’t just move holidays all willy nilly. Our forefathers put them there for a reason! My mother is -never- going to go for this”
Rebuttal: If by forefathers you mean Hallmark, then sure. The dates are already pretty arbitrarily set. Add to that the fact that time is but an illusion anyway and you can see that there’s nothing special about the days on which holidays land. Your mom would probably balk at just not coming home at all but simply moving the holiday probably isn’t the hardest sell ever. You never know until you try.

We just got done celebrating Mother’s Day on the Saturday before Mother’s Day Sunday. Guess how easy it is to get a reservation on the day before Mother’s Day…piece of cake. Move it to the previous Sunday and tell Mom “You’re just such an amazing mother I couldn’t wait another week to make a day just about you”. Look, our mom’s are always special. Mother’s Day is about taking 1 day and making it all about them. Does it -have- to be the whateverth Sunday in May? Mother’s Day is just an example though and one that most people don’t do a lot of traveling for. Valentine’s Day is similar too. Do the big fancy dinner the week before and spend the actual day together on the couch watching DVDs. This one is even better because -no one- wants to spend Valentine’s with a bunch of other people. It’s strictly a 2 person holiday that you are forced to share with a whole bunch of couples you don’t know and try all night to ignore. The real magic comes on the bigger holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

How many times have you pushed someone’s birthday around to make it land on a weekend? That happens all the time and people rarely bat an eye. Isn’t Christmas just another birthday? Moving Christmas effectively gives you 2 special days. One for traveling and one where you stay home with your nearest and dearest.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday to push around. I love taking vacations over Thanksgiving week. You know how many people go to Hawaii or Mexico or Jamaica over Thanksgiving week? Hardly anybody. Another added benefit is that since you probably get that Thursday and Friday off anyway, you only have to blow 3 vacation days for a whole week of not being at work and sipping mojitos on the beach. Moving Thanksgiving gives you 2 special days. One for traveling for family and one for traveling yourself. Even if you don’t take the big vacation there’s something fun about doing Thanksgiving on your own with a bunch of friends. No family hierarchies. No kiddie table. Probably a lot more wine than at the family Thanksgiving. This is a hard to do once you have a family of your own so get it while the gettin’s good.

Those of you who already walk this walk are going to scream and gnash your teeth that I’m letting the secret out. You will say that the beauty is that since everyone else is corraled into a single day like oh so many cattle you have a big benefit to picking an “off” day to celebrate. If I let the secret out and everyone is no longer corraled I’ve ruined it. I say pish tosh, people -are- cattle when it comes to holidays. We aren’t geniuses for figuring this out, we just have the courage to buck the system and walk our own road.

So I say, stop! Stop the tyranny of the calendar! Take those holiday markings as a directionally appropriate approximation of a day and not as a carved in stone by the lord thy god celebrate-today-or-die imperative. I say this because I know you probably won’t do it. If my message does let a few more people discover this joy though I would be a happy person.