Megaholiday

There has been a lot of holiday-related news going on. Apparently, a “war” on Christmas is being waged by evil non-Christians. People are inconsiderately wishing other people “happy holidays.” In fact, the White House Christmas card, after quoting a passage from the New Testament (which clearly in no way reflects any religious affiliation), the White House had the audacity to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Can you imagine? And through all of this, not a single non-Christian pundit on T.V. has lived up to the conservative Christians’ claims that heathens are attempting to stop them from enjoying the birth of Christ. It’s been very eventful. I have of course stayed above the hoopla, and with good reason. I have other fish to fry; other concerns to address.

There is a certain breed of us New Yorkers that has it really good over the holidays. We aren’t Christian. We aren’t Jewish. We aren’t not Christian and Jewish. We are consumers, who celebrate the holiday season the most American way possible: we shop and fantasize about presents. We don’t venture into any type of house of worship, and we feel comfortable making Christian jokes on the day of Jesus’ supposed birth. We wish people “happy holidays” and we’re proud of it. We eat latke’s because they are tasty, and maybe we light some menorah that a relative gave us one year for a couple days because our friends are doing it and we don’t want to feel left out. We also buy a Christmas tree, because then we have an excuse to buy candy canes. Basically, we win. We win because we can choose our holidays since, essentially, we have no defaults.

This wonderful state of endless choices, however, is being revoked for the year. It’s unclear what to do. Chaos. The first night of Hanukkah is also Christmas eve! Yes, that’s right, all our holidays are converging into one megaholiday, and what that requires is making choices. And sacrifices. For one, there will only be one present-giving holiday this year. All of the possible days that us super-celebrators could get presents are arriving at the same time. And then there is the question of what to eat on Christmas eve. I have settled on latke’s, but it’s obviously a very personal choice that will be haunting us all in the days to come. Most importantly, we will be unable to celebrate with our friends, since most of them will be celebrating something during the megaholiday. Serious sacrifice.

Yes, it is certainly going to be an odd holiday season here in New York.
-Esmee