How to Handle Holidays

There are many ways to approach the festive season. First, one must determine his/her/its holiday goal.

If you want to fuel your anxiety, and raise your level of misery, then watch all the TV ads and insist to yourself that your life be just like the guy who gives the woman the 20k diamond bracelet, like the family who has a big fireplace in a stately home and whose members are all good looking, well dressed and smiley. Convince yourself you must shower all with gifts beyond your paygrade or you are admitting failure and the world will end. Once you have spent some weeks soaking up the ads, comparing yourself in a less than favorable light, spend the rest of the season getting rip roaring drunk, especially at inopportune times, like when your kids wake up on Christmas morning, or when it is time to stand up the tree and decorate it.

If you want to enjoy the season, then just hope you have the good sense to appreciate the friends and family you have, the cleverness to not lead them to expect gifts and bribes which you can't afford, and the sense to know that good people appreciate it when whatever they do for you is accepted graciously with sincere gratitude.

It is mostly a choice. If your kids are being raised by peers, public school and TV, you are probably screwed. Resign yourself to the fact that they will be disappointed and have no clue what you are talking about if you try to discuss what is real and what really matters. Too late. You should have raised the little munchkins yourself.

If you aren't married, it is often a great stress reliever to break up with the current squeeze prior to Thanksgiving. That way you don't have someone placing uncomfortable expectations upon you. Especially if it is a female who is fond of jewelry store commercials. Get a big poster which expresses outrage at blood diamonds, or something like that. My view is that diamonds and those who promote them are the devil. Nothing good can come of the path they push.

You know you have trained your loved ones well if you can give them each a gift wrapped raisin and they react with a smile and a hug, telling you how happy they are you could be with them for the holidays.

Believe it or not, I think I actually have come very close to achieving that. The last part. You could never get away with that if you have kids in the picture. Hmmm. Maybe some of this explains why I am single. Oh well, my blood pressure is low and I know what it is like to be with the wrong person, so single is by no means the worst condition one can experience.

This is going to be a great Christmas season. I can see it now.