Happy Holidays

Holidays are for puzzles, hot chocolate, rain tapping on my window. They're for staying in my pajama all day. Even... days. Holidays are for baking bread for the first time. I don't mean banana bread. Nope. I mean real luscious bread. The kind that needs flexing muscles and kneading. That needs yeast and a large dose of patience for it to rise. Holidays are for phone calls to old friends. To sad friends who are alone for the holidays. To happy friends that forgot about you but you call them anyways. Holidays are for buying flowers in the grocery store. On a whim. Because you feel like it. For no apparent reason. Holidays are for bathtubs, and movies, and hot soup that lasts for days. Holidays are for binge watching your favorite Netflix show, and then another, and then another. Holidays are for driving somewhere you haven't been before, for hiking somewhere you haven't hiked before, for doing something you haven't done before. Holidays are for missing family, because you are not with them, and even though they don't even celebrate the same holiday because they are in the other side of the world - you kinda wish they had, so you can at least be together in the metaverse. 
Holidays are for boosters, and omicron, and frantic messages from friends saying 'um, you might have covid now, because we hung out with that friend of a friend of a friend that was confirmed positive on Monday!' Holidays are for freaking out thinking you had covid, only then to find out you just had the booster's side effects. Holidays are for feeling good about yourself that you lived through this pandemic for nearly two years and still did NOT get covid. Knock on wood. Holidays are for calming down a friend who dreamt they had covid, or the friend that dreamt that their friend had covid and died, holidays are for dreaming about covid. Holidays are for watching the news, because even though you know you don't really need to watch it, you kinda really need to watch it. Holidays are for looking up covid testing sites, just in case. And looking up testing at home kits, just in case. And buying K-n95 masks on Amazon, just in case. Holidays are for relaxation, except you can't feel any because you are panic'd over omicron and the state of the world and the global pandemic that never ends and the death rate rising and climate change going bananas and your life not turning up the way you wanted it to but then again some of it is a good thing, a really good thing, and and and and and and and and and.... holidays are for gratitude. That you are alive. That your loved ones are alive. That you have that hot chocolate from your favorite brand that your favorite person made for you. Holidays are for gratitude for the favorite person, for your pets, for your will to celebrate this holiday, for your will to be grateful, for your soul to expand and your body to move, for your hand to write and your heart to sing. Holidays are for you. Are for you to do whatever the fuck you want with them. Whatever the fuck YOU want with them. They're nothing more. They're nothing less. Happy whatever-you-make-of-them holidays.