Today is February 9, 2016. We are now 39 days into the year. At the end of this week, on the 14th of February, the “holiday” season, will be officially over. The end, Done. Until…of course, Easter rolls around. Then we begin the next round of sugar-gorging, present shopping, holiday madness. Because people buy Easter presents now, apparently! It’s a thing. Hey! Let’s celebrate the crucifixion and mythological resurrecting of a Jew, by buying each other new X-boxes or pink Uggs! I know, let’s fill the Uggs with plastic grass and jelly beans! YES! I saw it on Pinterest! And then, let’s throw AWAY the Uggs, because they are seriously the ugliest footwear ever and I know because I lived through the 70’s and nobody over the age of four should be wearing squishy booties, ok?
The holidays begin with Halloween, fly through thanksgiving, then it’s your December holiday of choice that requires a huge cash outlay and much eating of red and green baked goods, despite which December holiday you choose…Ok, maybe your baked goods were white and blue, the official Hanukka colors. Whatevs. Then it peaks out at New Year’s eve in a heave of exhaustion, gives us a short breather to pretend to dry out and get in shape, then revs back up again in a blaze of red and pink feelings of inadequacy and misery in mid-February…And then, just when you’re speaking to your spouse or partner again after they give you a new sports bra for Valentine’s day, and you think it’s safe to go back outside again without the assault of the holiday-industrial complex in your face at every turn, things slow down again just long enough for the snow to melt, the sun to return, the taxes to get done…it’s Easter, or, for my peeps, Passover or what I call Spring Thanksgiving, since my seders are really just about getting out the nice napkins and having friends over for a big meal with my handmade matzo.
But somehow, Passover hasn’t yet been turned into a gifting or carding holiday, the way other formerly non-gifty-cardy holidays like Halloween have become, but I’m sure, somewhere, in a secret underground secure location, in Hallmark’s Kansas City HQ, someone is working on Passover cards and gifts. Maybe they already exist? Are there Passover cards? I haven’t been in a Hallmark store since the 90’s…are there still Hallmark stores? All of ‘em. Halloween, V-day, Easter, let alone Xmas and Hanukkah, have become cardy-gifty-candy-orgy spend-fests. Kids get Easter presents now, not just plastic baskets with a few milk chocolate bunnies and some Brach’s jelly beans like we did, when I was a kid. Oh wait, no we didn’t…
But Valentine’s day?…Here we go again. I know what you’re thinking. Is she going to simultaneously drone and rage on about cookie-dough filled Crossonuts or brownie batter filled Englullers (that’s an English muffin-cruller mashup that I just invented, btw)? Is she? Am I? Well, do you want me too? I mean, after five years, and five Valentine’s days, do you really want to hear that all again? Even I’m sick of myself, and I’m my biggest fan! But, If you really, really, want me too….