cliches

We're ignoring the late-December madness completely this year. We don't celebrate any of these December holidays - we wait for the Most Important Date in the Kaminker-Wood household: January 3, the anniversary of our domestic partnership. Some years we send holiday cards, and some years we do our version of going all-out and make our own card.

But this year, we're moving, we have an anniversary trip planned in January - and Tala is coming! A lot to look forward to in January, and December is just another month.

Except for the ads, the Christmas muzak, the co-workers reciting litanies of what they bought for whom... This year I'm finding it pretty easy to tune out. Not working in Rockefeller Center sure helps!

I've noticed something new this year. Long ago, I blogged about platitudes, meaningless expressions that drive me nuts. Nuts! This year I'm hearing one that's new to me: "Why do the worst things always happen around Christmas?"

The answer is easy: they don't.

If by "around Christmas," one means December, then you've got a one in twelve chance of the Bad Thing occurring around that time. If you charted everyone's life histories, noting every Bad Thing, you'd probably find them pretty evenly spaced through the year. Even persistent urban legends like an increase of suicide attempts on New Year's Eve and an increase in domestic violence around Super Bowl have been debunked. Why did this particular Bad Thing happen around Christmas? Coincidence. Why does it seem like Bad Things happen around Christmas? Because those are the ones you're remembering.

But most people don't like coincidence, and they don't believe in them. Thus my least favourite platitude in all the world: everything happens for a reason.

In my universe, there are no reasons. There are only coincidences, and random chance.

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