{"id":1208,"date":"2012-12-27T13:14:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T12:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2012-12-30T19:08:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T18:08:29","slug":"avoiding-the-christmas-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1208","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding the Post-Christmas Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22044148@N08\/2286315635\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; border: 0px none;\" title=\"Lakeville Cemetery\" alt=\"Lakeville Cemetery\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2288\/2286315635_77933a85f8_m.jpg?resize=240%2C180\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" \/><\/a>December 26th<\/p>\n<p>We all know the feeling. The previous month (and a half) has brought us from a festive atmosphere of holiday cheer and expectation. Then we rise in an arcing crescendo of holiday anticipation, shopping, music and parties before climaxing in a day of glee, fatty meats and gift wrapping. And then, it&#8217;s over. It&#8217;s December 26th. That anticipation is gone, and what lies ahead is only work, two plus months of dismal weather and no more holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Some people claim that it doesn&#8217;t bother them. They are lying. Here are some ways to deal with the Christmas Crash.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Denial<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One way to deal with the post-holiday doldrums is to just don&#8217;t. Do everything you can to pretend that the holidays are not over. Have holiday parties, wear ugly colorful sweaters, listen to Christmas music and hand out gifts. Have a Christmas dinner once a week, just for fun. If nobody wants to come, invite cats. Sure, things might be said about you: you&#8217;re crazy, delusional and covered in fur, but once you start handing out gifts again, they&#8217;ll stop. Plus, insane asylums usually mean good meds and lots of interesting superheroes to meet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hibernate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Go to sleep. That&#8217;s right, let&#8217;s follow the lead of bears and squirrels, our, admittedly evolutionarily distant, friends. Our ursine and sciurine brethren have a wonderful coping method for winter: they load up on heavy foods, find a warm hole and then sleep right through the long winter months.<\/p>\n<p>Hm, if they wear stupid sweaters and watch sitcoms, then maybe we&#8217;re closer on the evolutionary tree than we thought.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Party<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have a party for everything. Think that Christmas is the last reason to celebrate all winter? You are wrong, January and February are wrought with reasons to partaaaay. Here are just a few:<\/p>\n<p>January 14 &#8211; The Simpsons premiers, 1990.<\/p>\n<p>January 16 &#8211; National Nothing Day, a day where you can celebrate not having to celebrate anything.<\/p>\n<p>January 19 &#8211; The front-hook bra is invented, 1951.<\/p>\n<p>February 1 &#8211; Fred Flintstone&#8217;s birthday, 2 million B.C.<\/p>\n<p>February 25 &#8211; Milli Vanilli wins a Grammy for &#8220;Best New Artist,&#8221; 1990. Tell me that&#8217;s not a great excuse for an &#8216;Oops party.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sexual Healing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re stuck inside. You have a bed, floor, kitchen table, or strong chair. You have a significant other (or $137.12). So be like Nike and Just Do It. Sex does everything nice weather can do for you and more. It releases endorphins, reduces stress and blood pressure. Furthermore, sex is known as a &#8216;mood repair strategy,&#8217; meaning it is a recommended technique to help shift someone&#8217;s mood from general sadness or clinical depression to a state of greater contentment or happiness.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, sex often results in having a partner for Trivial Pursuit, someone with whom to see movies and eat lunch and a person to trick into giving you back massages. People have long figured that since there was nothing else to do, they might as well enjoy inside activities.<\/p>\n<p>Why do you think there are so many September and October birthdays? (I am October 11th. Ewww)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Get Smarter or Get Fitter<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When all the above fail, you might want to just suck it up and do something to improve yourself. Set yourself a reading list, decide to learn everything you can about a certain global issue or sign up for a gym membership, and then actually go. I know, I know, who the hell wants to do something to improve themselves, right?<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing, these things could work out for you. If you start working out now, you&#8217;ll look like less of a fat, pale troll monster in April when everyone else starts working out. Reading and learning can make you more attractive to a potential sexual mate and thus make sexual healing more possible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Over to you<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Any ideas on how to beat the winter gloom? Please help, I don&#8217;t want to get smarter or fitter and I lost my ugly sweater!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 26th We all know the feeling. The previous month (and a half) has brought us from a festive atmosphere of holiday cheer and expectation. Then we rise in an arcing crescendo of holiday anticipation, shopping, music and parties before climaxing in a day of glee, fatty meats and gift wrapping. And then, it&#8217;s over. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-ju","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1211,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}