I anticipated Christmas from the day after Thanksgiving and after weeks of waiting it came and went in a haze* and now I’m left with the twenty-sixth through the thirtieth of December, the five most anticlimactic days of the year.
I actually spent the twenty-sixth with friends watching soccer on Boxing Day, which in recent years has become a tradition, because if there’s one thing the Christmas season needs, it’s more day drinking.
But now, here we are, it’s the twenty-seventh. Tomorrow I’m flying back to New York from Rochester to do not much of anything, really. I’m looking forward to some days of nothing, no socializing, no special dishes to cook, no gifts to exchange.
When I was a kid, it was the opposite, these days after Christmas were just a countdown to going back to school. Usually by the twenty-seventh, I had picked out my favorite toy from that year’s haul and played with it exclusively. (I think my all time favorite was my GameBoy. I remember playing Motorcross Maniacs and Tennis with my friend Jon by hooking our GameBoys up with a cord for two player stuff.)
As I got a little older, into my twenties and thirties, New Year’s Eve presented a different problem entirely, that of inflated expectations. I feel like my friends and I were always saying, “We have to do something classic for New Years!” and then we’d end up drinking in one of our living rooms. Has anyone ever had a truly great New Years Eve? It’s probably as rare as a truly epic St. Patricks Day. It’s cool that everyone collectively tries to have a party and I like the ball dropping and everything but that’s about it. I’m 41. These days I’m liking New Year’s Day more and more, everyone just sleeping in and taking it easy.
People in my social media feed are already looking forward to 2019. “What kind of energy are you going to bring into 2019?!” Hell if I know, I’m barely used to 2018.
But we’re not there yet, we’re still here in the post Christmas doldrums, another one has come and gone. I don’t have a GameBoy, though, instead I have books and a 5:30AM flight to New York.
When people say Happy Holidays, do these days even count?
