Ignoring holiday killjoys

Published 12:00 am Sunday, December 14, 2014

If you’re like me, you approach December with an eye toward what you won’t do, as much as what you will.

I won’t max out my Target card. I won’t attempt another homemade gingerbread house. I won’t buy a Furby.

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This year I’m adding a few more items to my Won’t Do list. I’ve spent a fair number of hours absorbing terrible holiday advice — through magazine articles, social media posts, publicists pitching seasonal stories — and this year I’m vowing to do none of it.

I hope you’ll join me.

I won’t eat a small meal before attending holiday parties and sip plenty of water once I get there to avoid overindulging.

I like overindulging. I like it especially well in December when the offerings upon which to overindulge include pie and eggnog and Champagne.

I will skip that superfluous small meal before I leave the house because I will be eating a small meal when I arrive. It’s called brie. And I won’t be washing it down with water.

I won’t calculate the number of hours I would need to spend downhill skiing to burn off the meal I just enjoyed.

Another year, another expert urging us to hang our heads in shame for flagrantly surpassing our recommended daily allowance of calories.

The Huffington Post even offers a handy slide show spelling out how to burn off the 3,000 calories we pack in, on average, at our holiday feasts. A 13-hour walk would do it, as would a four-hour run or a six-and-a-half-hour spin on the elliptical.

Or we could sit on the couch with the family members we’re lucky to see and talk about life or love or politics or Kim Kardashian. We could read a book to a child if there’s one nearby.

Holidays, for all sorts of reasons, have become freighted with guilt. We’re supposed to make them magical and memorable for our loved ones, equal parts Pinterest and North Pole.

This year, I’m just planning to enjoy it all. Starting, of course, with the brie.

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