Perhaps holidays are just meant to be that way.

To seem indefinitely long when they start, to seem impossibly short when they end and to speed up incredibly in the middle.

They seem fat and elastic when they are looming around the corner but sort of thin and misty trailing off in the distance when they are over.

Right before they start, holidays seem like baggy monsters that could accommodate almost anything, from our long-hated work backlogs, to cleaning jobs around the house that we have had to put off for many months, to catching up with those new novels that we’ve been embarrassed to admit to not having read for so long, to long afternoon naps without guilt.

The beginnings are optimistic times. We feel we are going to be able to let go for a few days. It is as though a new self is going to just push itself up the hump of those last few work days and slide into the beauty just beyond like a child’s slide at an amusement park. Then we are going to emerge on the other side as new human beings stripped of all things left undone on the to-do list.

♠The insignificant must-do’s
♠The dreaded have-to-do’s
♠The tricky must-try-to-do’s

♥The fun things
♥♥The restful things
♥♥♥The most important things

But of course, a new person hardly ever emerges.

What did we expect?

For those of us who perceive holidays as a time when anything is possible, the perception of time during breaks itself can be a trap. And when illusion clears, usually on that last evening before the break, it is as though Mephistopheles comes to demand his share of time back and one has sold one’s soul to the devil!

So next time, holidays will be just that. HOLIDAYS.

A blank. A time of nothing.

For no one can demand anything of nothing and no one can be disappointed in the expectation of nothing.

So let December begin!