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a nervous, obligated curiosity We had witnessed the end of its long southbound journey out of mundanity and darkness. It was one more of the small, strange, lit up events the city offers, the tree like a hallucination, devoured by the darkening avenues, brought in to offer a visible reason to exclaim about something, the city inventing something upon which to rejoice. The holidays feel overwhelmingly personal, but perhaps the best thing about them is that they are not personal at all. look to the unnamed days of January and February

“So my family plays White Elephant with a twist: you have to challenge someone to a mini game if you want to steal their gift... With a huge family it gets out of hand pretty quick. A thread of our games:”

“Lol Krug family holidays be like:”

“That seems like a simple idea, but when I first sobered up, I was enraged about other people’s seemingly casual relationships with alcohol, a relationship I could never master within myself. I wasn’t mad at them, but I was painfully jealous and ashamed about what I assumed was a character flaw that only I possessed, in that I couldn’t drink just one or two beers and socialize. No, instead I needed to know there would be a steady supply of alcohol and a party atmosphere so no one noticed how many times I went back to get another one.”

“But in the end we did my actual favorite thing, which is staying in the city over a major holiday weekend. Staying here over Thanksgiving or Christmas is the closest you will ever get to seeing a private New York, a New York as a small town, the bare, dead, and wonderful skeleton that remains when scrubbed of both transplants and tourists, when divested of anyone with anywhere else to go.” “We filled our apartment with loud, bright, sincere, concerned people being loud and bright and sincere and concerned at one another.”