The worst day of the year is rapidly approaching again. I speak, of course, of St. Valentine’s Day. It is, without a doubt, the dumbest holiday with the possible exception of Sweetest Day but since they pretty have the same theme I really sort of count them as the same holiday. Of course Sweetest Day is an even more ridiculous holiday but since it hasn’t really caught on the way Valentine’s Day has I have to sort of put it aside.

The dumbest thing is that no one can really definitively state where the whole holiday came from. It appears as if there were two Saint Valentines, for example. There was the Valentine of Rome who was a priest there in about 269 AD. He had a reputation of being a doctor in addition to being a priest and would often treat people even if they were unable to pay him.

Not long ago I wrote a column about smokers. Like much of my writing it was firmly tongue-in-cheek and was, in a round about way, a compliment on the resiliency of the people who still resolutely smoke despite weather and health concerns. For the most part I was complimented for this particular article. I concluded that when it came to smokers not a single one of them was likely to quit before they were ready and some may not be ready at all.

Being someone who has never been drunk and never been high and never tried smoking I am often looked at strangely. I can share some of this with one of my personal heroes, Penn Jilette. Penn is one half of the comedy/magician team of Penn & Teller. While Penn and I would completely and utterly disagree on matters of faith, religion and the human soul I think we could agree on much more. Penn is a lifelong teetotaler. That means he has never even had alcohol touch his lips. He has never even considered doing drugs. He too, has never been high.

It really does suprise me how many people sit there and are two faced to each other. The thing that gets to me the most is that no one is the exception to the rule even pastors and their familys do the same. my prime example is my ex boyfriend and his family. they had their own church and a book on how to save a marriage and to their congragation they looked like the perfect family. they told jokes about the family and they kissed at all the right times and they even hugged everyone that came to the church. they even treated me like that until they found out their son liked me. then they told him not to date me cause i had a little extra weight to me and they looked for any excuse possible to break us up.

My family has never been big on photographs. I am talking about my immediate family. I have aunts and uncles who fancy themselves professional photographers and seem to be willing to capture every single moment of every day of their children and grandchildren. I think some of them want to be able to stack all of these pictures together and then flip through them to create some kind of flip-book animation that shows every moment of their grandchildren. In my immediate family pictures have never been a big deal.

Sure there are pictures of key events. However, my parents home is not lined with pictures of every moment of my life or my brother’s life. Why? Well, I have news for some of you. Not everything needs to be filmed and documented and hung upon the wall for people to see as if every moment of your life is worth some kind of exhibit in a museum.

I am continually amazed at Midwesterners and how they react to the weather in the winter. This is the Midwest. Every year the weather gets cold and we have snow. In fact, this year it has been surprisingly, almost distressingly, mild so far. Still, people complain and whine and moan as soon as you get a couple of cloudy days strung together or, here in Chicago, the weather turns off of the lake and we get brisk winds.

I have written before about my love for winter. I enjoy the cooler months. There is a simple reason for that and that is because I am more comfortable with the idea of freezing to death as opposed to dying from heat-related issues. When you freeze to death you just kind of slow down and go to sleep. When you die from heat you sweat and your skin dries out and your lips crack and bleed and your tongue swells and you experience dementia and you burn up.

I am starting to believe there are two types of people in the world: those who enjoy and really get into holidays and those who do not. I am also starting to believe I am second type. I know plenty of people who are the first type, however, and they continue to be a bit of a puzzlement to me. Yes, I enjoy Christmas and I enjoy parties and I kind of see where the fun in holidays can be but what I cannot see is why people get so involved in holidays.

I was married to a woman who was very into holidays. She was particularly fond of Christmas. I have always had a soft-spot for Christmas. How can you not like a holiday that involves presents? I even used to enjoy decorating when I was a kid. My ex-wife was very into decorating. As I grew older the desire to spend hours and hours hanging up lights and dragging tree parts or entire trees into my living room and putting up ornaments just seemed like a lot of work for just one day.

I was watching television not very long ago and I happened to stumble across the show “Primetime Live.” It’s tough to keep the news magazine shows separate, and I will acknowledge that. They all seem to tell the same stories with the same dramatic flair and they like to repeat the same stories over and over and over again. At this point if there is a creep looking for underage children on the internet and who gets invited anywhere and DOESN’T expect Christ Hansen to step out of the kitchen then that person not only deserved to be arrested and locked away forever for being a pervert but he deserves to be tackled by police and locked away from the light for being stupid.

If you believe the commercials and ads running these days every single thing that a company sells would make an excellent Christmas present. As for me, I am giving out my equivalent of a homemade gift. I am giving what I am calling special editions of a novel I hope to sell to a publisher. To those of you who are my family and not aware of what I am giving you, I apologize in advance. I have this delusion that eventually, when I do become a hugely successful writer, the special editions will be worth a lot of money. Yes, I stole this idea from Stephen King.

If you watch Martha Stewart at all you know that whatever you are giving, no matter how expensive, it really isn’t worth a pile of wet snot compared to the thoughtful, time-consuming, ridiculously complicated things she wants you to make for people. I saw something on television with Die Stewart-frauen and she was making homemade pillows. Who the hell makes homemade pillows? If you have enough time to make homemade pillows for everyone on your Christmas list you need to go out and start volunteering or start a dog-walking business or something before you start paper-mache-ing things or dipping candles.

I know this is something that has been said before but we definitely live in a litigious society. For those of you who may not be following what I am talking about I mean that we love to sue people in this country. I am guessing that it could be something you find around the world but considering the chief product and export of the United States these days is lawyers I am guessing we do it more here than anywhere else. I mean, really, there are so many lawyers right now that I could probably call one up and ask one who they would like to sue and that lawyer would probably love to come up with a case.

Here in the Midwest the sun has decided to pack things up and head south a little earlier than normal. It feels very much like winter out there. What’s interesting is that it has been this way for a fairly short time and already people are acting like they are suffering from “seasonal affective disorder.” I don’t know if people suffered from this in the past but suddenly they seem to be suffering from it now. Apparently the cure is to sit on tanning beds or some damn thing.

It’s interesting to be in the Midwest when winter comes around. Chicago winters are notorious for being harsh. The thing is we don’t get nearly as much snow as a place like Buffalo. In fact, Northwest Indiana tends to get a lot more snow dumped on it than Chicago does. Still, Chicagoans act like they live in igloos and have to use sled-dogs during the winter.

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