Holidays can be kind of a funny situation for us writers.

On one hand, they probably seems almost like a vacation of sorts because it’s not exactly uncommon for people like me to just kind of sit back, put our feet up, and let the ideas come to us in whatever order the calendar dictates when these days make their appearances on the horizon! You know as well as I do that with Valentine’s Day coming up in less than two weeks, it won’t be long before all of those puff pieces about diamonds and chocolate and stuffed teddy bears depicting even your partner’s most mundane of interests will be popping up on every news program, paper, magazine, website, or neural implant that you use to consume your media content these days.

Heck, this column right here was almost going to be about Valentine’s Day, except that it still seemed a little early and I honestly just couldn’t come up with anything original to write about anyways…

Because that’s the thing – although the theme may be safely in the proverbial bag as we approach those predetermined days on the calendar, there’s still that pesky, little matter of actually having something new to say that you haven’t already said in a multitude of different ways over the last three consecutive years.  That’s sort of the writer’s conundrum that comes along with holidays – they never really change, and so after a while you start to realize that you can only remind guys so many ways why forgetting the biggest, most romantic day of the whole year might be somewhat critical to the overall longevity of any relationships they’re enjoying currently or even would like to see themselves enjoying in the future!

After a while if you’re not careful, you usually just end up repeating yourself, which most writers tend to want to avoid … if they have any self-respect, anyways.  I myself still have a little left – I keep it in a tiny bottle on my dresser and try to only use it sparingly, but I think there’s still a few drops left in there that I’m saving for a particularly righteous day…

Of course, some are better than others – Valentine’s Day, Labor Day, Flag Day are all kind of one-trick holidays, frankly, but we still have a few good ones to lean on throughout the year like Halloween and Christmas.  As long as women keep dressing like hookers and candy keeps being delicious, All Hallows’ Eve will always be a ripe source of material for me, and as for Christmas … why, I could probably write an entire book about nothing but hands down the awesomest time of the year, and in fact I most likely will do exactly that before too long here!

That last one might be a spoiler – do me a favor and just try to act surprised when you finally see the announcement, will ya?

That said, it may not happen often, but if the writer is so lucky and brilliant enough to find himself writing about writing about the holidays, in that case all bets are off and really, then just about everybody wins!  The reader gets to enjoy something a little different that still brushes on the holiday at hand without having to drudge through the same old, same old yet again, the writer gets to maintain the dwindling shards of his own dignity just a wee bit longer by not repeating his same, sad old jokes about Cupid and Singing Gorilla-Grams once more, and hey, that one guy who really was about to take his life into his own hands by forgetting a Valentine’s Day gift for his leading lady still gets a friendly nudge to keep him from having to learn how to go grocery shopping and pick out linens for himself all over again!

Seriously, dude – you’ve been dating for how many years now? She will kill you and the judge will consider it “an accident” if you don’t at least bring the woman home a box of wine and some flowers and maybe one of those singing fish that you mount to the wall or something.  Nothing gets the ladies in the mood quite like Big Mouth Billy Bass and his lesser-known Rivers of Romance 3-disc expansion pack!

You know what – maybe I do still have a little Valentine’s Day wisdom left in me to impart after all…