The end of Valentine’s Day has been weighing heavily on my mind. Being my second-favorite holiday, I suppose that’s to be expected…but the truth is, I feel the weight of the end of every holiday.
It doesn't matter if it's a holiday I celebrate or not. It can be a big holiday, like Christmas, or a small one, like Saint Patrick's Day. It can even be a holiday from a different culture, that I may actually know very little about.
For the few days after every holiday, I feel a strange heaviness.
It's never as all-consuming as it is for me immediately after Halloween. Valentine's Day comes somewhat close but, of course, doesn't quite touch it.
Still, though...
I look at the leftover decorations, the clearance aisles, the social media posts from the previous days, and I feel strangely about it.
I think of how painful it is for me, to watch Halloween get torn down, stored away, reduced to a fifty-percent-off pile of candy corn on a grocery store display.
On February 16th, at work, I watched the Valentine's Day balloons get gathered up and deflated. It felt post-apocalyptic somehow. And while, yes, it did hit harder being basically the only other holiday I look forward to in adulthood (I sort of subconsciously start a Valentine's Day countdown in my head on November 1st morning), I realized more just how much I feel this after every holiday.
Though I may have outgrown most holidays as time has gone on, and largely rejected the calendar-driven life, it does still sadden me to see them pass by. Not so much for myself (though it can be depressing to think about the past, and how once-special days have no devolved into a nothingness), but for the people out there like me, that I know exist.
I've only met one person in my life who matched my Halloween energy with a different holiday. I had a very close friend that I met through LiveJournal many years ago that loved Christmas...hated Halloween, yet we bonded over our intense love for our respective holidays, and were always happy to see each other happy, when the true season started. (I always wished we were closer geographically, as I feel like we would have had an absolute blast on November 1st, me with my clearance Halloween and her with the official start of Christmas.) I have yet to meet anyone else that feels any other holiday so intensely, but I'm certain that they exist. And, at the end of every season, I think of them, wherever they may be.
I think of the way the magic drains out of the leftover remnants of the holiday for everyone else; How Christmas lights suddenly seem dimmer. How Easter eggs suddenly seem colorless. I remember how I felt, in the days after Halloween as a child, when I would look at my decorations before they got taken down, and feel like some kind of light had been snuffed out of them.
And more painful still, is the way the world moves on so easily. Over the past several days, I've watched Easter (and to a slightly lesser extent, Saint Patrick's Day) overtake the former Valentine's Day displays. The bright spot in the dead of winter has become a reminder that spring is on the way, and, I'm sure that someone out there is thrilled to see it, but I'm also sure that someone else is devastated to see the candy hearts and roses and punny teddy bears all gone.
I know that, if someone's favorite holiday, that they feel a connection to in the depths of their very soul, is something other than Halloween, they are most likely not reading this blog, or following me on social media at all. But, just know, if you're out there, I do see you.
I may not care about these "other" holidays, but I know the pain that comes with watching them end. I understand the agony of decorations being ripped down and stored away, and the countdown resetting to 364 (or 365 if it's a leap year...and damned if it doesn't truly feel like one this year), possibly better than anyone. Even when you find ways to live it year round, that emptiness in those first few days is unmatched. And I wonder now, who may be out there, walking around desperately, through clearance aisles and neighborhoods, searching for a sign that their favorite day really and truly did happen.
I'm still searching for Halloween, even now.
Stay spooky, my friends. Or jolly. Or lucky. Or hoppy. Or lovey-dovey...Whatever suits you. Calendar be damned.
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