Holiday plan might lift weight from shoulders
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
I’m behind schedule in my holiday weight gain. You know - Americans traditionally gain 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and who am I to break with tradition? It’s always kind of tough toward the end, isn’t it, when you’ve only packed on 5 or 6 pounds, and you’re forced - forced! - to stuff yourself on New Year’s Eve, just to do your civic duty.
Though stressful, this hewing-to-the-holiday-agenda has given me an idea.
How about we spread out “the winter holidays” through the year, making the mandatory joy something to actually look forward to, instead of dread. And it would give us something to do in February, besides mourn the absence of Valentine’s Day cards.
I even worked out all the technical bits. We could form a Department of Holiday Security, which would assign everyone a “holiday month.” (Religious observances would remain the same.) During your designated month, you’d send cards, buy presents, host relatives and, of course, complain.
Think what a wonderful world it would be with the holiday spirit of love and giving with us all year round. We’d have Christmas not just in July, but in March and October, too. Finally, we’d have an answer to the beloved Christmas carol “Why Can’t Every Day Be Christmas?” (or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa). It can!!! And we could spread the pain as well - just picture the lineless stores when you buy your wreath in May.
Sounds like a great idea, right? That’s what I thought, particularly since I’ve spent the past few days listening to friends complain about oversubscribed party schedules, crowded malls and gift-wrap elbow (more painful than tennis elbow, and it comes with paper cuts).
But when I ran my idea past a group of holiday gripers, it was naysay city. “It can’t be done,” one woman said, as if I’d suggested time travel, or going directly to a human operator when you call directory assistance.
“I don’t know,” another said, “it’s probably better to cram all the family stuff into a month and a half because you’ve got the rest of the year to prepare yourself. It’s like going to the dentist and the doctor in one day. Tough, but you get it over with, you know what I mean?”
For others, the desire to keep things as they are came down to the TV schedule:“The Office’ would be pre-empted by ‘Rudolph’ 12 months of the year,” one woman said. “It’s a bad idea.”
I hate to say it, but I saw her point. Even though I long for crowd-free shopping, I’m not sure I could handle hearing “Little Drummer Boy” piped into the mall on a daily basis.
