Happy Holidays

I like Martha Stewart. I really do. I've met her and she's a good egg. But there's something about the way she made everything about every holiday pretty and decorative and festive and charming and pleasant and creative and adorable and PERFECT, that was really getting on my nerves.

It really wasn't her fault -- that is, her fault that she made me feel totally inadequate if I couldn't make a perfectly cute homemade Easter basket with hand-dyed pastel eggs and hand-sewn felt chicks or some other useless craft item perched delicately on real green wheatgrass, with Godiva dark chocolate eggs, jellybeans called jelly eggs and an expensive light lavender wire-edged ribbon crimped just so, that looked like something from her magazine -- but I have to admit, now that she has fallen from grace, it makes this holiday one whole helluva lot easier. I like this extremely imperfect Easter. I like the badly painted eggs the color of vomit. I like the baskets with headless chocolate bunnies on display. I like things NOT being perfect. I'm finding life isn't perfect and neither are holidays.

But my point here is not about Martha Stewart, but rather what she and a few other "perfectly happy" brands represent. I could have just as easily taken Hallmark to task. In fact, I might as well call this phenomenon I'm describing Hallmark Hell. It's all about feeling trapped in the perfect holiday card, where the perfect people live, who celebrate holidays perfectly.

Certain married people seem to exert their marital muscles strongarming you in to celebrating all the happy holidays with forced glee, without even noticing they are doing it. They just don't think anyone should be alone or not with them on a holiday. Let me say it plainly married folks, that your "happy holiday" is another person's annual nightmare. For divorced, separated, widowed, single, gay and a lot of other people, the "happy family" image of holidays is something not to celebrate but to dread.

Not to name names, but all these well-meaning married people want to throw holiday events and invite you over to make you feel ... I don't know ... sometimes I have to think, just to make you feel inadequate. I used to be one of those married people, but even then I saw no joy in inviting 20 people over for a traditional family holiday celebration.

There is no "traditional family" to invite over any more -- did you notice? Throwing the perfect holiday party isn't enough for these perfect holiday people, they also want to see if you measure up and are as perfectly and happily married as they are. Nothing keeps them from humiliating everyone they invite over with "Why Don't You Fit In?" type inquiries.

If you're a single woman age 20 - 45, get ready to be asked why you're not married. If you're a single man age 20 - 45, get ready for someone to whisper in the kitchen to someone in your family or circle of friends, "is he gay?" If you're gay and want to bring your same-sex partner to the party, someone you actually DO want to marry, tell me that's easy to pull off in front of these happily married people? If you're divorced, the rude inquiries seem to know no bounds. If you're widowed, everyone wants to fix you up and can't refrain from asking if you're "ready yet?" whether you lost your spouse 2 days ago, 2 weeks ago, 2 months ago or 2 years ago. When it comes to "ready" you are tempted to rephrase the question. Ready to bash Aunt Fran in the face for asking? Yes, you're VERY ready for that.

Why we still keep pretending everyone is one big happy family, I do not know. The statistics are all against the notion. The more "non-traditional" families we have, the more we seem to cling to outdated images of the happy holiday celebration of dad, mom, junior and sis. It' s most peculiar and really high time we got over it.

Try something new this year. Butt out of my family business and respect me and the way I happen to live. Try asking me about politics, movies, sports, the weather. The sense that certain subjects were taboo in public conversation, was something about the "good old days" worthy of retaining at the holiday dinner table. You can actually have guests over and NOT ask them the bloody details of their child custody battle or why they are wasting their lives dating married men at 35, when they obviously are desperate to get married or other "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS" subjects. Is this inquiry the kind of thing that's supposed to make guests feel welcome?

So all I ask is a little consideration. Consider the fact that I would rather go to the movies or shampoo my hair or rake leaves on your "special day" and it's really okay to leave me out. Or if I do join in -- yes, thank you for invitiing me -- but feel free NOT to ask me how my perfect happy holiday is going. It's not so perfect.