There is a down side to hating people you know. The holidays aren't much fun.

Having a holiday is nice, the actually act of observing a holiday is cool, but "the holidays" as an entity are crappy. Because you see, the only difference between "a holiday" and "the holidays" is the preferential social smattering that seem to surround my beloved times of joy.

The greatest part of "the holidays" is supposed to be gathering with your family and friends to enjoy each other’s company. Well, when you hate people that pretty much rules out the friends part, and chances are if you hate people, you tend to find your family a wee bit annoying, so that really no fun. So your joy time has now been reduced from the essence of human experience normally packaged to a perfectly normal holiday, to observing traditions of that said holiday. And really, wouldn't it make more sense if "the holidays" were actually about the holidays, instead of the social foolery that we associate them with now.

If friends and family were really that important, and you enjoyed their company so much, couldn't you meet with them on a bi-annual basis, alternating weekends, or just some obscure week in June when the weather is nicer and nobody has a cold, the flu, or sparring with the bubonic plague? Why must we all gather in the bleak of winter braving the treacherous roads of ice to subject our 20-year-old college students to the same round of questions from 9,000 different people about their life. Yes, college life is fine, Yes, I like home-cooked meals, No I don't keep in touch with all my high school buddies, I didn't keep in touch with them in high school so why start now? Why must you ask these things? Idle chatter is the bane of my existence, every time I hear I have to physically restrain my self from punching someone in their fugly face.

And really when you get right down to it, that's all "the holidays" are, an excuse for random idle chatter.