Holidays (Thread)

Those of you that have been following me for awhile know that I'm not a huge fan of holidays. To me, they represent little more than an escape that would could literally take at any other time. Spend time with family? Why can't you do it on June 12th?

But..
1/

I also have a family and for them, some holidays have meaning.

With the Pandemic drawing everyone closer (forcibly) toward my way of celebrating holidays, I'd like to tell you a true story and offer up some suggestions. This thread probably won't piss you off.

Many years ago
2/

when my wife and I lived in Las Vegas with our son, we were away from all of our other family. As Thanksgiving got closer, my wife went out and bought a 10 lb turkey. All of the fixins!

For the three of us (one of us, 7 years old)

And she got really excited about the
3/

and so I asked her: "Which part of Thanksgiving do you like the most? Where the women cram themselves into a kitchen for 12 hours or where the men sit on their asses watching sports, drinking, and arguing about politics?"

She said, "Smartass. I like spending the time with
4/

family!"
I said, "Which family? The family that you get to see every day, or the family that whenever they call or invite you to a BBQ you roll you eyes? Which part of the family drama do you miss the most the rest of the year?"

This didn't start a fight, which was nice,
5/

but it did start us to thinking more creatively about how we spend our Holidays. For the last 10 years or so, we *may* have a traditional Tgiving meal, but my wife almost never kills herself for it.

What we decided to do instead, was to actually spend Thanksgiving DOING
6/

something with our families that made us thankful. One year we saw Jesus Christ Superstar. Another year (with my folks), we went to the Excalibur in Las Vegas and ate medievally, with our hands. One year we went kayacking, another bungee jumping, another ziplining.

There have
7/

been times of course when work and life have prevented us from going out and being active, so instead we do a "movie marathon" type night. As my son is an adult now, we'll probably smoke a lot of pot and put Dark Side of the Rainbow on while we shoot the shit and chill out.
8/

Our Christmases have also changed slightly, recognizing that the 'best' part of Christmas is the presents we've more or less done away with the bulk of the other crap. And we don't really adhere to the date too much either (gifts start coming a few weeks early and trickle in
9/

until after the New Year).

Some of you might think that these 'new' traditions of ours suck, and I think that that's fucking superb! I don't WANT you to use MY traditions, because then they aren't mine. What would be really nice is for you to make your own traditions! Spend
10/

some actual quality time with your family - not just watching television or talking about important stuff, but playing a video game or taking an interest. Bake a cake together or have a food fight. Make a damned mess, it'll clean up.

Give yourselves a reason to CELEBRATE.
11/11