Even if you're a devout atheist, the end of December can be quite stressful. There's a lot of expectations to fulfill in a limited amount of time.
There's the shopping in over-packed stores, the crowded roads and parking lots to endure on the way to and from said stores, there are the office parties, religious services, family holiday meals, gift giving, gift returning, child meltdowns, remembering to like all your Internet companions' holiday photos, the random visit from an old friend you haven't seen in 8 years but can only hang out with for 45 minutes at a coffee shop 33 minutes away at exactly 2:15pm and if you don't go you seem like a jerk...all that and then New Year's Eve and the social obligation to over-drink on a week-day night.
And that's not the half of it!
What I'm trying to say is...it's time to de-stress the holidays by moving them. Now, I'm not a Koch brother so there's no multi-million dollar ad campaign coming to legally change the dates. But families can make their own executive decision and move Christmas to say...the last weekend in January. Due to scheduling conflicts, my family had to do that once and it was AWESOME! So little stress!
And for New Year's? Let's take out a page from the Persians and move it to the spring equinox. Seriously, who wants to celebrate the renewal of life in the deathly cold?!!? Nobody.
Now, I'm not expecting an overnight sea change when it comes to Holiday dates...simply planting some thought seeds that may allow people to concentrate on the true meaning of the holidays rather than devolving into stressed out scheduling machines.
Until then, I'll be working on a time machine and practicing my Latin so I can go back a couple of Millennia and have a serious discussion with the Creators of the Roman calendar.
