Boo! The holidays are coming!

 

   Recently, one of my attendants mentioned that Halloween is their favorite holiday (so to speak, although it’s not a day off work). I guess my attendant was thinking about the upcoming holiday season. 

   Yes, ready or not, the holidays are coming up.  Now that it’s late September and Fall is here – already! – the holidays will be here before we know it. 

   When my attendant asked if I like Halloween, I said that I don’t.  Even though Autumn is my favorite season, with the cooling weather, the sharpening light, the leaves turning colors, Halloween is one of my least favorite holidays. 

   When I was a little child, it seemed I was sick a lot on Halloween, not able to wear my costume to school and go out that night and get lots of candy in my bag.  When I was able to go out trick-or-treating, my mom and dad would always fight over who would take me out, and my mom always lost and had to take me out.  The last year I went out, I really liked the costume I came up with – a black blob, a sheet my mom dyed black and put over me – but, when my mom took me out in my wheelchair, the sheet kept snagging in my wheels and ripping. 

   Years later – about twenty years ago, perhaps – I set out candy on a nice, sturdy, wooden chair (answering the door and handing out candy is awkward at the very least and another reason why Halloween isn’t my favorite day). I woke up the next morning to find pieces of the chair strewn up and down the street.  Someone went to considerable effort to do a Halloween prank, but it wasn’t fun or funny to me and really put the quash on the holiday for me. 

   I like Thanksgiving much better, although I now tend to be alone with my attendants.  It is all about relaxing, with good cooking and eating.  Very simple – the way I like it. 

   I love the idea of Christmas – peace and love – and the lights and music, but I don’t like all the rushing around and the pressure to buy, buy, buy.  When I was growing up, Christmas never seemed to be enough, and I’m still trying to not think this way. 

   And, finally, I just don’t like New Year’s.  For one thing, I don’t drink and am not a partier.  Also, I don’t like thinking of a whole new 12 months ahead of me, with resolutions and all that. I’m much more comfortable with one day at a time. 

   Perhaps I can say that I love the season but not the holidays.

Pandemic? What pandemic?

 

   It’s called cognitive dissonance.

   That’s “the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change,” according to Oxford Languages, or “the perception of contradictory information,” according to Wikipedia. It’s holding two or more very different or contradictory ideas, beliefs or worldviews in your head at the same time. 

   Sounds really hard. 

   It is. 

   I’m having a hard time when I read that Patti Smith, along with a bunch of other artists, are back on tour, including as part of large music festivals, “out of traction, back in action” (as the Los Angeles Times story on Smith was headlined with a well-known quote from her after being sidelined with a broken leg years ago). It’s hard to see that concerts are going on here in town – even as, yes, I’m attending them, albeit on the sidelines and masked up – and that students are back in school. It’s seems odd that people are going out to restaurants, movies and football games and that lots of people are flying again. 

   It’s hard to see all this when COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising (although not so much here in Los Angeles County, where there are mask mandates in place), when more and more young people, like those who attend music festivals and schools and colleges, are getting COVID, when health officials warn against raveling and being in crowds. 

   It’s like we’re being told – no, we’re being told – to do one thing – stay home, be safe – and being offered, tempted with, another thing – eat out, go back to school and concerts (finally!), travel. What’s crazy or is making me crazy is that we don’t have to pick one or the other.  It seems we can have both, we can do both. 

   Never mind that these two things – stay home, go out – are opposites, that they contradict each other.  That’s the message that’s out there now, that’s we’re left to go with, hold in our heads. 

   I may not have a headache, but I’m definitely feeling crazy. And no wonder!  It’s worse than being stir-crazy.  At least stir-crazy is one simple idea in your head.          

   I wonder why this is going on.  Maybe it has something to do with this quote that was in an article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about crowds returning to college football games.  It’s from Victor Matheson, a sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., who says about letting crowds back into stadiums,   “That’s not good for public health, but it’s good for Texas and Alabama’s bottom line.”    

   You think?