The Post-Holiday Blog

It’s January 4th, and that means one thing: I survived another holiday season filled with weird food from other people. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to think and reflect about the holidays, their greater meaning, what a turtle dove is, why someones mom would kiss Santa, blah blah blah. And so far, I have two conclusions: 1) There are 2 major types of holidays: morning and evening. 2) Holiday store hours suck.

The two types of holidays are fairly straight forward. Morning holidays are the Christmas-esk ones, you take care of the holiday crap in the morning, and you’re done before 2pm. Evening holidays are your Thanksgivings, New Years Eve, Christmas Eve, etc. all of the stuff is done in the evening.

I know, some of you traditionalistic people will flip out and say that all holidays are all-day holidays because of family visiting and whatnot. Well, I have a theory to counter that: One can only spend so long at crazy Great Grandma Edna’s house before getting bored. Seriously, extended family you only see twice a year is only entertaining for a few hours. Really, it’s best if you see them in 3-hour bursts. Kind of like doing cardio at the gym, it’s only productive and enjoyable every so often.

And with every store (except major gas stations) being closed on these holidays, we’re all stuck at crazy Great Grandma Edna’s house awkwardly conversing with family we barely tolerate. We need an escape. We need a Starbucks or a Wendy’s or a mall to be open. Heck, I’d even settle for running the isles at Kroger.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Adam, how dare you! That’s the day the pilgrims ate turkey with the natives. So we have to be native with our turkey-esk family! And Christmas is the day Jesus was born! We need all day off to lay around the house.” Yes, your family is full of turkeys. And I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th… And I’m not saying they should be open all day. I have a revolutionary idea that can remedy this festive predicament.

Let me explain.  For Thanksgiving/Christmas Eve, stores can close at 3pm. That’s more than enough time for the employees to get home for dinner, and it gives the rest of us stuff to do for 6 hours.

Christmas could be the same thing, but backwards. Christmas is a morning holiday (if you weren’t aware of that, you’ve been doing Christmas wrong. Check out this blog to see how my family does it), so stores could be closed until 2pm. Then they can open at 2, people can go to work, and it’ll give the rest of us a chance to get rid of the cabin fever we got from being at crazy Great Grandma Edna’s for so many long long hours. Yes, many many hours, possibly days… Because everything is closed on Christmas Eve, so currently we’re stuck inside for 48 hours. I don’t know about you, but I can only play Guitar Hero and Halo so long (2.5 hours) before I go all Master Chief on the Guitar Hero guitar.

New Years Eve. Lets face it, NYE is more of a holiday than New Years Day. NYD is a glorified recovery day from a night full of twerking and getting buzzed on Dr. Pepper. So, stores can be open until 8pm on New Years Eve (the real party doesn’t start until 10 anyway), and then they can open up at 2pm on New Years Day. 2 pm is more than enough time to sleep in and recover from the previous night. If it’s not, well, that’s your fault for being irresponsible and drinking way too much Dr. Pepper mixed with Ovaltine and Hawaiian Punch.

Everybody wins this way. Oh, and of course, holiday pay would still be in effect for all of it. And I vote to make NYE a holiday pay day, too. Not to mention how sales would skyrocket because people would almost feel obligated to buy stuff, just from sheer happiness at being out of the house. I know I would definitely buy more than I should. But I also just like to spend money… Speaking of which, I need to check eBay. *checks eBay* Booya! I won a shirt! Now I just need to bid on this stuffed taxidermied squirrel….

Anyway, I vote for making stores open on holidays. It’ll make the holidays more enjoyable.

If you have hate mail (or the opposite, yes, love mail), please send it with pictures attached. I love pictures. It’s so much easier to look at them than reading the whole thing.