Christmas is Dead, Long Live Darth Vader Day!

Since the passing of my mother four years ago, and the repose of my grandmother almost two years ago, the various holidays of the year have lost their luster. Until now, I had never realized how important a role matriarchal enthusiasm played in making holidays vital and festive occasions. I never would have set up a Christmas tree if it weren't for the joyful prodding of my mother every year, just after Thanksgiving. Indeed, I have never set up a Christmas tree in all the years I've lived alone, except for the one year that my mother sent me a small plastic tree with fiber-optic sparkly stars. Christmas trees are just not something most bachelors fuss with.

Now that I am comfortably set in my bachelorhood ("I'm a loner, Dotty--a rebel."), I assume that the holidays will run together like all the other days of the year, except that everyone outside of my wonderfully cozy little world will be seen periodically scurrying about with a frantic fervency that now to me just seems...tiring. I have neither need nor inclination to join in their insanity. I am finally in a position to make up my own holidays whenever I feel like it, and the ritual observance—set by me, of course—invariably consists of a 12-pack of delicious micro-brew, a frozen pizza, and a Korean horror flick of some sort. So to all of you, I would like to wish you and yours a very Happy Friday, or as I now choose to proclaim it, Darth Vader Day.