Reschedule holidays to avoid disappointment

Very few of you know about Facial Hair February. This monthlong
celebration of beards, neck-hair and fun is going on right now, and
is but one of a set of new holidays being used to combat the
pressure and emotional distress caused by most national
holidays.

Since midterms are fast approaching, I had planned to study this
Saturday night. But I can’t. Saturday is Valentine’s
Day, and everyone in Westwood is going to pity me if they walk past
Starbucks and see me hunched over my books. My frustration of
having to study at home to avoid the critical comments disguised as
sympathy (example: “Maybe you’ll have a valentine next
year”) actually masks a deeper frustration ““ the
expectations that accompany, and ruin, the traditional
holidays.

Every holiday has expectations attached to it. Valentine’s
Day is supposed to be a special, romantic day when you and your
significant other exchange gifts that you have to like (and keep),
and then spend the rest of the evening feeling like you have to
have a really good time.

The pressures to give gifts and enjoy yourself are the defining
characteristics of most holidays, such as Christmas and birthdays.
The problem with expectations is that they are very often
unfulfilled, and yearly disappointment means a day that should be a
time to relax and enjoy yourself becomes intrinsically linked to
hurt feelings and bad memories. When everyone places a lot of
emphasis on one event, there is no way the day can live up to that
pressure, and suddenly anything that goes wrong becomes a
catastrophe. Burning a pumpkin pie is normally not a big deal, but
if everyone has been looking forward to your famous pumpkin pie all
year, there could be tears involved.

There are solutions. First, if you like the holiday, then save
it by rescheduling it. My family celebrated Thanksgiving in July
this year, and it was one of our best ever. Leaving our
expectations in November and starting fresh opened us up to new
creativity. All of our guests dressed as either American Indians or
Pilgrim settlers, and we ate the pumpkin pie right out of the dish.
Instead of the traditional post-meal nap, we played a rousing game
of dominoes (which the American Indians swept). Anything that went
wrong that day didn’t have old memories attached to it; they
were fresh problems that didn’t seem like problems at all
because it was July and we were all celebrating together

If you like a holiday enough, you may want to celebrate it more
than once during the year. For example, I know some people who
celebrated Independence Day twice this year: once on the standard
4th of July, and once on its almost-half-year anniversary, the 6th
of February. Half birthdays are also a good chance to make yourself
a cake without feeling pressure to enjoy every minute of the
day.

If you don’t like some of the holidays, or have too many
bad experiences with them, make up your own holidays. Started
anonymously somewhere in the United States, Facial Hair February is
slowly but surely growing on the UCLA campus. The only requirements
are that you follow the credo: “No razor shall touch the face
during the month of February.” The lack of expectations
associated with the new holiday, and the freedom of having an
entire month to celebrate it, open up endless possibilities.

Paul Litwin, who is leading the holiday at UCLA, said that it
also “leads perfectly into Mustache March.”

To relieve the combined pressure of Valentine’s Day and
midterms, I am going to celebrate Facial Hair February this weekend
and go camping.

Davis is a fourth-year communication studies student. E-mail
her at [email protected]. Send general comments to
[email protected].