How do you celebrate holidays?
I avoid them as much as possible.
I hate my birthday because the only real birthday happened a long time ago.
Christmas starts in September now and I’m fatigued by the time it comes. I don’t think most people believe in the real reason for Christmas anyway. They just want to decorate and get gifts. I question their sincerity when they are all nice in the season, yet give me the finger while driving.
As usual, because I’m an introvert, I have a hard time processing the attention and wish that it would just be over.
Delusions of Adequacy 
Not so much “celebrate” as “participate.” For over 60 years now, I’ve merely stood around and kinda sorta patronized the birthdays, marriages, high holy days, reg’lar US holidays, and “just because it’s Tuesday” parties.
Milady is a curious blend of Pilipino, Spanish, and Murkan cultures. Daughter of a surgeon whose family was of great prestige in the P.I. when she was a child, she was steeped in custom, tradition, noblesse oblige, privilege, and celebration.
The Pinay part of her emerges in that country’s favorite pastimes — eating, singing, crying, and praying . . . in groups. The Spanish part of her heritage observes all the festivals, days of obligation, and food planted in the archipelago by the conquistadores.
When we finally landed here with our kids in ’69, she simply subsumed all the various US occasions for deep-fried cholesterol, cakes, seasonal dishes, ice cream, and decent coffee.
So, since my MI about 25 years ago, I put only a token amount of the adobo, the pancit, the kaldereta, the lumpia, the turkey breast, the candied yams, the honey-baked ham, the cheese bread, the empanadas, the sheet cake, the ice cream, the Krispy Kremes . . . whatever’s on the table and just listen for my name in the myriad of languages which ricochet off the walls of our house when her biddy buddies show up. The only two I had no idea how to deal with were Japanese lady with a lisp and an Ethiopan woman.
The woman also is a compulsive feeder. Actually, “food pusher” might be a bit closer to the mark. In anticipation of a group of 25 people, she’ll prepare enough for at least twice that many. Then at the end of the to-do, she makes heavy-duty paper plates, cling film, tinfoil, Zip-Locs, grocery bags, and cleaned fast-food containers from Waffle House, Colonel Sanders, Olive Garden, or those giant bags of flip-lid food containers from Sam’s or Wal-Mart available for guests to load up and walk off with.
LOVES to see people eating, and then loading up their cars at the end of the evening with whatever eggrolls, chicken, ham, pancit, adobo, bread sticks, cake, fruit, or other stuff she would never have room for in the fridge.
And finally, she and whichever daughter, daughter-in-law, or granddaughter happens to be there will spend hours washing all the tubs, pots, pans, baking dishes, serving bowls, trays, and such while I or one of my sons or grandsons collect the red plastic cups, forks, spoons, and water bottles in a drawstring bag to wait for curb pickup.
But, in retrospect, I wouldn’t really have it any other way.
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I hate my birthday too. 9-11
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