Reality check on the holiday season

Reality check on the holiday season

By A. Suhandojo

JAKARTA (JP): "Holiday Season? Frankly my dear I don't give a
damn." Part of that sentence is from a Scarlett O'Hara line when
she wanted to get back together with her on-and-off husband Rhett
Butler in the famous motion picture Gone with the Wind. But that
was not the reason why I used the line as the lead in this
article. The reason was because I felt that it could whole
heartedly represent my personal sentiments toward the holiday
season.

Being a single "brown" female, without a boyfriend, and as
someone who is of modest means, the meaning of the expression
"holiday season" in my personal dictionary refers to (1) Sleeping
at home all day, just like the rest of the year, or (2) Sleeping
all day at "only-God-knows-where-my-family-would-go-this-holiday-
season". Of course those two options could not be considered as
the most interesting way to spend the holiday.

Sometimes I wonder whether the holiday season still holds its
true meaning of being the most magical time of the year, the time
to give and to forgive. Today, the event seems merely to be used
by the department stores and card publishers to make us -- the
target market -- increase our expenditures on cards, clothes,
perfumes and even trees, by 10 times more than our paychecks. In
order to do that, they are willing to create 25-meter high
Christmas trees with a TV as an ornament. I really did not get
it: does that mean that TV sets look good on a tree, or should we
buy another TV?

Besides being a perfect marketing strategy, the holiday season
is still supposed to be fun. Full of days off, a "not so
generous" year-end bonus, mistletoe, and most of all a romantic
candle light New Year's Eve dinner as we approach the new
millennium. The candle light is a precaution measure to face the
possibility of having electricity failures at 00:00 on Jan. 1,
2000. We can never be sure about what will happen on that date. I
really admire all the brave mothers to be, who plan on giving
birth at that "questionable" moment, while some people say they
will not even dare to use their ATM cards!

Approaching the age of 26 made me decide not to spend one
second more of my holiday season in the old and boring way. This
led to my struggle to try and spend my holiday in a "Y2K
compliance -- they said" way, which of course, is not very
expensive. This included a long list of options such as:

* Going to the dentist: "Doc, this is an emergency, I don't
have a life, help!"

* Having a palm reader read my hands.

* Watching Dawson's Creek rerun on TPI. My favorite episode
was the one where Pacey Witter impersonated Mel Gibson in Brave
Heart, and YES I am a nerd.

* Writing this article.

Not much of a list I suppose, because by the end of the
evening I had crossed out all of the options. But you should try
that "palm-reading" thing. The old man that read my hands told me
that I would get married next year. He knew it from the line
between my thumb and my index finger, I never knew that those
lines could be so powerful! If you are interested in his service,
feel free to contact me.

Being a cyber-gal made me try to seek advice on this holiday
season "mumbo jumbo" from Jeeves on ASK.com. ASK.com is a search
engine that has the motto: "Answering millions of your
questions." I nominated ASK.COM as the most "human" search engine
on the net, because it allowed me to use questions instead of a
clue word to find vital information from the Internet.

People's questions ranged from where to buy the fancy "Pokemon
cards" to whether their loved one was their perfect match. You
could ask anything! For example: If you would like to know where
you can buy this season's hottest trend "tube" top, the site will
link you to more than 243 online shops, from Bloomingdale's to
"the-what?-Say-it-again" store. Estimated time to find the
perfect tube top is about 47.5 hours. Thanks to the unlimited
options we've got out there.

OK, back to my holiday problem. My question to Jeeves was as
simple as this: "What should I do this holiday season, if I do
not have either money or a boyfriend?" Jeeves answered my
question by (1) Listing all the U.S. holiday dates; (2) Providing
a nice tip on how to have a romantic dinner on Christmas Eve
(without telling me how to get a partner first); (3) Advice on
how to get the "life that I want" because he said it was definite
that I did not have one.

Anyway, although I failed to find the perfect holiday plan,
all the soul-searching made me realize that happiness is
something that must be achieved in the here and now. Some might
express this feeling later when they are becoming richer,
thinking this will make them happier. Some might say that if they
knew that their life was so miserable as they got older, they
would have enjoyed their younger days more. So happiness is a
present time need; you can always choose to be happy no matter
what you do or who you are.

After a while, I at last began to consider myself to be quite
fortunate. I could still enjoy my days in the not so fresh
Jakarta air and a healthy body, with lovely parents to come home
to. I could also whistle the Jingle bells tune on my way home as
loud as I wanted to in this holiday season without getting "the
look" from everybody. I might not have Pamela Anderson's figure,
but men still offer me their seats whenever I have to stand in a
bus.

My plan for this upcoming holiday season is to clean up my
closet and donate all my one-size-too-small-and-I-hate-the-model
clothes that I have had since I was in college. Well, at least I
took a tiny part in the effort to make the world a better place
to live in. My second best plan is still to watch the Dawson's
Creek rerun on TPI. So for you all readers, cheers and enjoy the
holiday!