The holiday...

As my posts indicate, I don't get out much. Mostly this is my preference, since I've spent a great deal of my life getting out a lot, so I'm happy to stay put, hammering on my keyboard. Still, I take some note of the larger world during my tiny, daily runs to the drug store, PetSmart, the supermarket, the post office.

Today I had to zoom up to the drug store for a handful of things that didn't justify a full trip to the grocery: a couple of cans of cat food, Cokes, a can of chicken noodle soup. When I walked into Walgreens, I blinked, startled. Walgreens seemed to have expanded: grown fleshy, opulent with glittery decoration, the shelves groaning with brightly colored stuff. Of course, I thought. It's The Holiday. I'm referring to that stretch of time from the week before Hallowe'en clear through the first week of January. We freelancers know it as The Big Dry Nothing, since work shrivels up, as the Christmas spirit expands.

Actually, everything goes to pot around this time. People take their time off, and even if they don't have stored up comp or vacation time, they still slither out to go shopping. The bosses are all gone, so nothing can get approved, if anyone wanted approval, which they don't. What the American worker wants is to start baking. Platters of cake and dishes of candy are duly toted in. Cubes are decorated. Screen savers are switched to the more Santa-esque. Slit-eyed entrepreneurial types buy a thousand of the year's hard to get toy on eBay, and hawk it to their co-workers out by the loading dock. What I'm saying here, is just hang it up, if you're a freelancer. It's a good time to work on the novel.

I've never understood why America doesn't acknowledge this phenomenon, this slide into a whatthehell mentality that extends itself every year, and just declare The Holiday, which would be a big fudgy ball consisting of Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years. God knows we need it, because after The Holiday, it's a long, dry, choking road until anything that resembles fun comes along.

This year, we need to add the Presidential Inauguration to The Holiday calendar, since I see that at least a million people plan on attending. Despite the lousy financial news that appears every day, people are still whipped into a froth of joy over Obama...and good for them, good for all of us...but it may portend the addition of a permanent November 4, to commemorate the day we got our country back.

I wouldn't mind. As long as I don't have to wear a costume or buy a fruitcake.