In Which I Establish a New National Holiday

It’s building up to my favorite time of year. Holiday Tea time? you ask. Christmas? No, more even than those I love late December, because it’s Retrospective time of year, in which I review all the Year in Reviews. I think it should be a national holiday. (And it should be a national holiday in China, too, just on a different day.) It should be called Review Day, or Day of Retrospection.

And it shall be a marathon day of of every breaking news story and all of the year’s celebrity breakups. And we shall purge our lives of the previous year in one binge and then we shall begin on the next year. Like a Day of Atonement, without the Atoning. In the morning people will go through their homes and ship to Goodwill anything that hasn’t been touched in the previous year. We shall eat all the leftovers in the fridge and freezer. And the news channels shall have a special starting at noon called “In Case You Missed It – January!” Followed at 1 pm by “February – Month of Crisis!” and so on until midnight.

Sure, you say, that’s called New Year’s Eve, dumbass. I say no, New Year’s Eve is about Next Year, plans, resolutions, Day of Retrospection is about the previous year, and you’re the dumbass, dumbass. It could be on New Year’s Eve eve, because I really hate it when things happen after the magazines and specials come out. Oh, like the tsunami last year. As if it weren’t enough of a tragedy, it happened on the 25th, too late for the publication deadlines.

I love the passage of time. I love aging. Another year closer to death? No, another year further from childhood. Another year in which things have become better, in general.