As the holiday season comes to a close for you¹My holiday season goes all the way until January 27th, I started thinking about why and how we seek out occasions where we do things differently every year on the same day. 

For example, ever year, we honor the people we love on the day of their birth by presenting gifts. Why? It isn’t that I am against giving gifts. I just think a “just because” gift means more than a “this day is supposed to mean you get a gift so I will look for something to give you so you know you are important to me”²I realize I may be alone in this..

One thing about Holidays that confuses me is that our culture gives us permission to act differently on holidays than we do on normal days. It is ok, perhaps even required, to get a little tipsy on New Year’s Eve, but not on July 29th. It is expected to eat too much in one sitting at Thanksgiving, but do it every day and the shamers will come for you.

In my life, I have tried doing holiday traditions during “normal operations” and it almost always lessens the joy in the experience. That special dessert I only make at Christmas? If I make it April 17th, it just doesn’t taste the same³This may be because I tweaked the recipe a bit..

In the past year I have noticed lots of friends have been getting married. I suppose that is expected given the way the world turns and some were delayed because of that long time between March 15, 2020 and August 20, 2022. We all seek someone to talk to and be with and care about what is going on in our lives⁴The funniest line about marriage I have read in a book was where a widow told a friend, “I miss having someone ask me if I had a bowel movement today.”.

There is a special holiday that comes with getting married which is called a honeymoon. It is just for you and your new spouse and it happens so you get time to yourselves, with bounty, to shape your new life together.

My own marriage will be 29 years old this month⁵On January 27th, and and I look back on the years and see how I didn’t follow the holiday and honeymoon expectations. I think maybe I missed something I wish I had experienced.

We tried taking honeymoons a couple of times since we got married, and just like that special dish on April 17th, it just doesn’t feel like I think it should. We didn’t take one when we got married, and perhaps that ruined the magic of a honeymoon? It was a full 7 years before we took our first trip that we called a delayed honeymoon — three weeks in Europe. Before that, almost all of our travel was to return home to visit family. On holidays. It was a great trip, but it didn’t line up with my expectations of a honeymoon. Last year, we went away on a trip I was dying to take — I called it a second honeymoon. Husband and I had a wonderful time, but again, I didn’t feel the way I expected to feel on a honeymoon. In the future, I will call them trips and vacations or an extended date night.

If I am honest with myself, part of it is that I don’t really approve of honeymoons is the idea that you can only forge a bond if you are away from the distractions of day to day life⁶And shouldn’t that bond be forged before you decide to get married?. If you need to get away from the life you have chosen to live in order to bond as a couple, do you really think that bond will last against the headwinds of your choices?

I wonder if I would feel more in touch with holidays and honeymoons if I did them the way our culture prescribes them. Get married – spend time alone as a couple to prepare to face the world together. Get born – get gifts to prepare you for the year ahead as you grow into different stages, you will need different things to help you through the next year. Traditions become remembrances of the people who raised you and the occasions they found important to mark.

Maybe that is why making old fashioned creamed pie on April 17th doesn’t make me happy.

As I sit here feeling like Charlie Brown — distressed because I don’t know the true meaning of honeymoons or holidays — there is no Linus to walk in and provide me with insight that makes it all ok. There is no pathetic Christmas Tree which will start to sparkle and bring meaning to the holidays back into my life. But, there is the fact that my tongue is a bit in my cheek as I realize this whining serves a purpose to make me feel a bit better about the holidays our culture does acknowledge. Or, perhaps I should say, the occasions I was taught were important by my family.

I think sometimes that the reason I don’t like holidays is that they are so many demands associated with them. Feel THIS emotion on THIS date and mark the date THIS way. Spend THIS much money but only for exchanging presents in THIS season. The cabbage strudel will only banish evil spirits if made on January 1st. A gift is only appropriate to celebrate an acknowledged occasion.

At LittleOne’s High School, they now put all the religious observances they know about on the school calendar. They don’t take them all off from school, but they have told all the teachers not to schedule tests or project due dates on the O days⁷There are a LOT of O days on the calendar we received. The world has a lot of holidays.. 

I find the school district’s position on this amusing. And good. And a little strange. There is a binding that happens between you and the group of people celebrating your holiday with you. I have not held on to all the traditions I was raised with, and that is ok⁸If nothing else, I can see my siblings celebrating some of them on Facebook.. Just like everything else in the world, holidays change. Honeymoons come in and out of style. But, the need for holidays and honeymoons — creating them, observing them, and passing them along to your family and your community — that seems universal. 

So enjoy your holiday season. I’m learning again how to enjoy, and appreciate, mine.