The Nigh-Insuperable Challenges of an Ordinary Season

The last of the lights come down today.

That was it. It’s gone. The last holiday of the Holiday Season that everyone says “Happy Holidays” for. With no entertaining nor entertainment required, New Year’s Day is a slightly less awkward holiday than Christmas. Indeed, I think the holiday exists primarily as a day of recovery from the night’s revels before. One might say it’s for recovering from the entire season, but I imagine Christmas feels like last year for many long before this point.

Once New Year’s Day is done, that’s it. That festive final third of the year that began with Labor Day/Back to School is over. Nothing to look forward to from here but for the warm weather to return.

At least the days are getting longer, 43 seconds to one minute at a time. Oh, yeah, I’m keeping track.

January and February are a long stretch of gray, frigid nothing, with only the much-resented Valentine’s Day to mark the calendar. After that it’s, what, St. Patrick’s Day? Easter at least announces the warm weather. Still, it doesn’t seem like U.S. popular culture is feeling its oats until Memorial Day Weekend, when summer unofficially begins.

It’s easy to make those proclamations and resolutions when the season and the days feel bigger than they do now. And it’s easy to see how they fall away in the charmless, colorless days of the long winter that follows.

This is exactly the point of it all. If character is what you are in the dark, or when you think no one is looking, then...well, there’s a similar theme I’m reaching for. Again, there is nothing special about this part of the year. It’s just you and the general pointlessness of existence that was eclipsed by four months of football, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Until yesterday.

This is the season in which we separate the doers from the talkers. The serious operators from the validation seekers.

No lights, no decorations, no songs. No excuses, either. Darn it.

I have to choose a side, too. Every day. Some days will be  easier than others, which is funny, because they’ll all look the same from here until the end of February. 

It’s the lights inside of us that color these days. If we could only get those Christmas lights back up where and when they really count....