The Family Season

Halloween marks the official beginning (for me) of the Silly Season, which lasts until March 2, the day after my birthday. Other people know it as 'family time,' and others still simply call it hell. These are the months--and the occasions--when families gather to celebrate various holidays that include, but are not limited to, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Tet, Valentine's Day, MLK Day, President's day, Groundhog Day, the vernal equinox, and any number of private events including birthdays, anniversaries, and Superbowl Sunday.

I'm not sure when I started harboring such a deep dislike and resentment for holidays. I remember in my 20s being the sole person left at Christmas in the house a mob of us rented on Capitol Hill, and getting desperately drunk at the Hawk and Dove. I also remember one Christmas when I was in my late teens getting a shoe-shine kit from my mom and dad, and to this day I wonder if this was an unsubtle hint of their expectations that I would end up on a street corner with a couple of cans of Kiwi brown and black and a brush.

Last year, I holed up in my house with a couple of pounds of sushi and a Giant Food breast of turkey. I learned how to make yam French fries. I was persuaded to have lunch on Christmas day with an old friend at a Chinese restaurant, the only place we found open. The food was tragically bad and MSG-laden, and I ended up with a killer headache that lasted until the 27th. On New Year's I watched all three-or is it four--Alien movies. It somehow seemed apt.

The first feature article I ever wrote and had published by the Washington Post was one on the rise of suicides during the Christmas holidays. Actually, it turned out to be an urban myth. Statistics failed to reveal what I hoped was a spike in such deaths and I found out people rarely did themselves in with their Christmas ties or the new kitchen knives from grandma. That, frankly, was a disappointment.

I'm not sure what I'll do this year for those wretched four months. I'm taking suggestions.