I know St. Patrick’s Day was a few weeks ago, but with pictures finally coming together on Facebook, I am reminiscing about everything that went on that week, and I’m reminded of something I realized: St. Patrick’s Day is one part of a triad of holidays that grows proportionally more disappointing as you get older.

If you’re a female, St. Patrick’s Day is like an old friend that you are so close with, but who then starts dating your crush or ex-boyfriend. It’s a distinct incident that stands out forever in your mind as the moment where everything changed from happy, reliable friendship to something altogether different. From that point forward, you love her for the memories, but your relationship with her gradually devolves to an acquaintance you’ll acknowledge whenever she’s around, but that’s about the extent of it. Sure, you had some great times celebrating St. Paddy’s Day, but now you don’t really have the energy to spend the day bar-hopping and risking public intoxication citations, bar fights, kissing someone ugly as sin because they’re Irish, and pretending midgets aren’t creepy because they’re dressed as a leprechaun (they’re still tiny, weird little bastards). What you really want to do is go to one place — a friend’s house, an uncrowded bar, anywhere — have a few more drinks than you should, kiss someone because they’re Irish AND just a fringe member of your group invited by a friend of a friend’s cousin so there’s no future awkwardness when you don’t call, and then turn in relatively early because it’s a Wednesday and we all have real jobs now and can’t take off without looking like immature alcoholics.  

There are similar problems with the night before Thanksgiving and New Years Eve.

The night before Thanksgiving is not a holiday until you go to college. Given the universality of the holiday (it transcends religion and is celebrated by everyone on the same day) and that students are given a short break to return home, it becomes a feast of reminiscing and bingeing with old friends. This is great fun for the first few years, but once removed from college, maybe even a few years after, you start to realize that people are growing up, getting real jobs, having kids, being responsible, etc. They don’t have time to be up at all hours the night before Thanksgiving because they have to get up early to trek to their in-laws, or they have to wake up at 5AM to put the 43 pound turkey in the oven so that all 22 of their cousins can eat when they invade their house. It’s sad to see people move on and not have the time to reminisce and binge with old friends, but it’s sadder if you try and force it, going out year after year, replacing old friends with younger, more-fun versions willing to binge despite the twinge of uneasiness in their eyes that this complete stranger, 10-years their senior is desperately trying to figure out what shot to buy them next. Sad.

New Years tends to linger the longest. Once you’re old enough to appreciate the party that New Years Eve can be, you ride the train for a few years and it’s always a desperate attempt to recapture something. Imagine a relative bought you a series of scratch-off lottery tickets for Christmas, and you wait to open them for a week. Sure, you could win $5000 a week for life, but the odds suggest they’ll end up in a trash can. In reality, New Years Eve is the dreaded “free ticket” prize. You won nothing, but you’re given a shred of hope. When it comes to a fun, exciting time, entering the night with little more than a shred of hope is just a simple, yet assured recipe for disappointment. It’s how I imagine attending a speed-dating event would be if you still maintained a shred of dignity — you’ll leave saddened, possibly ashamed, but most likely, thinking less of yourself. While the other holidays are avoidable, New Years Eve will always come, overhyped and unavoidable, waiting to let you down like the short, skinny foreign man running the newspaper-stand around the corner whose only discernible communication is a snide chuckle every time you discover your lottery ticket was not a winner.