Tis the Season for Lots of Pressure

In the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year's Eve, I find myself carefully planning out gifts and which events I'll be attending. I accept invitations, plot my outfits, and calculate how much money I can afford to spend on gifts and parties. I love spending the holidays with my friends and families, I really love going to parties filled with said friends and family, and I absolutely love giving gifts to those I love the most. With that being said, between the commercials, the Christmas music, and the Christmas countdown (on almost every TV channel), there is so much pressure to do the holiday season right.

Let's start with Christmas: you're expected to buy gifts for your family and friends. Certainly, you may have different arrangements with your family and friends, but according to just about every media outlet, you're expected to come up with the perfect gift for each person in your life. Gift-giving is supposed to be about finding something special for your someone special, because you want to show that person how much he/she means to you. Giving a gift is an opportunity to say "thank you" or "I love you" or even "You're awesome - here's a gift!" But it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that during the holiday season without feeling stressed and anxious.

Gift-giving guides and in-store arrangements suggest that this is the "perfect gift for mom" or that your boyfriend needs a new watch, not that book you know he's been gushing about for the past few months. There are gift-giving guides according to how much you want to spend -- as if you monetary value correlates to how important someone is in your life: $500 for mom, $300 for your brother, $200 for your sister who you've been fighting with, $400 for your dog because he is your best friend, naturally. However, this is hardly representative of the purpose of gift-giving or of the intricacies of your relationships. After all, isn't it the thought that counts? 

The over-commercialization of Christmas and the over-sharing of social media makes for a big mess of it all. You aren't just giving your gift in the quiet comfort of your home. Your gift may have to stack up to everyone else's gifts on Instagram or Facebook. I've seen Facebook posts boasting about Christmas and Hanukkah gifts, or Instagram pictures proudly revealing said Christmas loot. Throw in the fact that almost every website, blog, and store has a gift-giving guide which, though very helpful at times, seem to take the thought out of giving gifts in the first place and suggest what is the best gifts for the people in you life that they don't even know. 

There's so much pressure to get the gift right  or to buy the most presents. But the pressure doesn't stop there. The gift-giving might come to an end after Christmas, but New Year's Eve opens a whole new can of worms. New Year's Eve is arguably the most important party night of the year. It's your one chance to leap into the new year at your most fabulous, ensuring that the year to follow is one equally as fabulous as the party you attend in order to ring it in. It's one night. One night! You have to have your dress ready, champagne chilled, cover charges paid, and a cool party to attend -- not to mention, it needs to be fun. That is a lot to ask for. And it's not that it can't be done. New Year's Eve was once one of my favorite holidays, but that was because I spent in in the company of friends sans cover charge and in my pajamas. 

When you put so much money, effort, and energy into one night, building it up so as expecting it to be one of the best nights of your year (and last nights!), you're bound to set unrealistic expectations that end in a slump the next day as you nurse your hangover, and for some of us, human bites. Again, this is a night that's going to be on display. Expect pictures documenting every half hour of the night to appear on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so you better make sure that your hair looks good, you're parting with attractive people, and you're somewhere fabulous.

How can we just enjoy the night without letting all of the pressure -- the pressure that we have to have fun and have an amazing night -- get to us? Maybe it starts with lowering our expectations, or maybe it just starts with lowering the cover charges to get into all of these places. Either way, I think it starts with remembering what the night is at its very core: New Year's Eve. This goes for Christmas too. What are these holidays in their most basic definition? Even if you aren't religious, both holidays, and all holidays for that matter, are an excuse and a celebration to be with the people you care about the most, or to be with people that could potentially turn into the ones you care about most. These holidays are a time to showcase our love for each other and enjoy each other's company over great food, a bit of bubbly, and hopefully, some festive music. I think once we recognize what's beneath all of the bells and whistles, the advertisements, and hype, we can enjoy the season and relax. FINALLY.

Can Harry Be JUST Friends with Sally?

I watched When Harry Met Sally for the first time this winter break. I know -- it was a long time coming. After all, I'm a 20-something female. It's my duty to watch the entire library of chick flicks and move through life according to the chick flick code. After joining the rest of my sisterhood as someone who has seen the film, I talked over one of the major themes with a friend: can you truly be friends with someone of the opposite sex?

According to Harry, you can't; according to Sally, you can. My friend and I were decidedly "Team Sally," agreeing that of course you can be friends with someone of the opposite sex. It's 2013 -- soon to be 2014 -- men are not from Mars, and women are not from Venus. We may be different in some ways, but we are certainly not from different planets, and we most certainly can have a purely platonic relationship with each other. Men and women are just as capable as having a fulfilling relationship sans romance with each other as men have with other men and women have with other women. In fact, I think it's possible to have a friendship with someone of the opposite sex without ever wanting it to develop into something "more." These different-sex friendship function much in the same way that same-sex friendships do, and sometimes, the only difference between these types of relationships is in the sex of the friends and society's apparent bewilderment at how this friendship exists and prospers.

So we've established that men and women can be friends -- and good friends at that. But what happens when you misinterpret the joke of a long-time friend or mistake an intimate gesture to be more romantic than platonic? If a friend of the same sex offers to pay for your dinner or gives you a kiss on the cheek, you may not think anything of it. If that friend is of the opposite sex and does those things or strays from the firmly established norms of your friendship, suddenly, you question the motivations of your friend. When someone puts the bug in your ear, suggesting that this friend might feel something more, then what happens?

All it takes is for someone to plant the seed. A mutual friend might misread a text or a gesture from your "Harry" and propose that Harry wants fiery romance rather than friendly repartee. You might have never considered Harry as anything more than your friend, and you still might not be interested in pursuing romance, but all of a sudden, you're reading all of Harry's verbal and nonverbal cues as amorous. A simple text in the middle of the night might have previously been just another text from Harry, but now that the "seed" is there -- that little piece of doubt that your relationship isn't strictly platonic -- that text is a sign that Harry is in love with you. And that's how you begin to interpret your exchanges with this friend. Every actions seems to beg the question: "Does this mean that he likes me?"

He probably doesn't, and you probably still don't want to venture into romantic relationship territory, and yet, now that Pandora's Box has been opened, your previously neutral interactions are now seemingly sexually and romantically charged. And once that box has been opened, can you go back? Can you just shut off the filter -- you know, that sifter in your mind that filters everything your Harry or Sally says to determine whether he/she is more than just a friend? It's difficult, for sure, but then it just gets worse.

As my friend and I were discussing this phenomenon, the "friend-to-faux-flirtation" situation in which you begin to doubt this strictly platonic friendship, we wondered if it could wind up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. He and I have both been in situations when we have been friends with someone of the opposite sex for a really long time, never wanting nor being interested in pursuing something romantic. However, there came a point in those relationships when we began to question the motivations of our interactions with said friend, and started to question our own feelings toward that person in the process. I told my friend that he should set up his "Sally" with another guy, if he wasn't interested in her, so that he could divert her "imagined" romantic interest toward someone else. However, he made a valid point: what if he realized that her faux flirtation wasn't so "faux" at all, and decided that he wanted to move past friendship and onto a romantic relationship?

But is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Could you start being interested in your friend as "more than" because of this "imagined" romantic interest? Perhaps we should consult the chicken and the egg for their take on situations of this sort of complication. Relationships are prone to living in that "grey" area -- regardless of the genders involved -- but it only gets more muddied when you're dealing with a Harry and Sally. Does this mean that Harry and Sally can't be friends? No. But I think what this comes down to is the basics of any good friendship or relationship: honesty and open communication. If you can be honest and truthful with your Harry or Sally, then you won't have any mixed messages -- even if those messages end up being that you do want something more than a platonic friendship.

Is Facebook Ruining Reunions?

Every year around Thanksgiving, people trek home for not just the holiday, but for a long-weekend extravaganza of eating, drinking, and reconnecting with old friends from their old neighborhoods. For some, this reunion is informal, merely congregating at the local watering hole or "townie" bar. For others, though, the dreaded --or anticipated (largely depending on if you've lost weight or are unrecognizable)-- high school reunion serves as the facilitator in a more structured reunion with your friends from yesteryear. It brings a small community together once again, albeit in a mostly forced, awkward, and drunken way, in the hopes of reminding everyone of their shared inside jokes, memories, and potentially, worst years of their life.

Okay, maybe it's not entirely bad. High school reunions can be fun. After all, the people you graduated from high school with know you in a way that someone can only know you after sitting through class after class from kindergarten to senior year. These are the kids you sat on the bus with, the kids you attempted to outrun during gym class, the kids who misguidedly attempted to explain the "birds and the bees" to you for the first time in elementary school. Sure, the people you graduated from high school with may not necessarily know the person you are now, but they were a part of those very crucial formative years as you were attempting to become a functional and educated human being.

So I digress. High school reunions give you the opportunity to reconnect with everyone, for better or for worse. However, in the age of social media, Google searches, and Skype, you are never really more than a click away from your fellow class of (insert high school graduation date here) members. Just as the Internet is killing print media (debatable), and the video killed the radio star, Facebook is killing the high school reunion.

Think about all of the stereotypical hype surrounding a high school graduation: wondering what your crush looks like now; if the nerds are now ruling the world; if the cheerleaders have horizontally outgrown their uniforms; and more importantly, wondering what sort of interactions will take place at said reunion. This information is readily available prior to the fateful day in November, thanks to whatever social media platform on which you choose to connect with those from your past. You might not still actively talk to your former classmates, but there they are, "blowing up" your feed with posts from their weekend festivities, recent vacations, and life updates. Sure, you and Sally Smith may have parted ways after your senior prom fiasco, vowing never to speak to each other again, but you do know where she works, that she recently got promoted, is moving in with her boyfriend, and has dyed her hair a horrific shade of blonde.

That's the thing. Facebook takes all of that anticipation and "magic," we'll say, out of the high school reunion. You already know everything that has happened to your classmates post-graduation, and yet, you show up to the reunion location, asking the appropriate small talk questions, as if you didn't already know everything they were doing. They might fill in the blanks, yes, but if you're just asking due to a technicality, then what's the point? The thrill just isn't there. 

There's a certain expectation that when you go to a high school reunion, you'll learn new things about your former classmates and have refreshing and exciting interactions with them -- the kind you wouldn't have been able to have when you were in school together because you had such a familiar history. Even only five years removed from high school, you are (hopefully) not the same person you were when you got that high school diploma. You're also (hopefully) no longer just an extension of the "click" or social group you represented when you were in school. However, with Facebook granting us all access to each other's lives, we cannot escape that high school hierarchy or categorization because we don't have time to grow and develop away from the watchful eyes of those very same classmates who placed us in those hierarchies and categories to begin with. Inevitably, we show up at our high school reunions reverting to the same clicks/groups as opposed to intermingling and learning new things about our classmates.

Okay, I'll admit, the interactions at my high school reunion weren't entirely limited to the people I was friends with way back when, but I do think that with Facebook, it's harder for us to escape those former stereotypes, and even harder to reconnect in a way that's meaningful and mature past our high school years. We have the potential to keep in touch with our former flames, or poke an old friend, and even though preserving that connection via social media isn't necessarily bad, it is rendering an event like the high school reunion to lose some of its luster and appeal. 

I'm interested to see what happens in another five years. I anticipate that with time, as we move away from our hometown and make our way further into the real world, my classmates and I will finally be able to have a proper reunion. Til then, I'm going to limit my Facebook poking to those in my current circle only. You've been warned.

I referenced this once, and now it's stuck in my head; therefore, I must share it with you.