Halloween Date From Hell

It just seems wrong to complain about a Hellish Halloween. After all, isn't that the whole point? Yes, there are parades and parties and dressing up. But the holiday's very nature is to be creepy. It's about scaring small children, TPing and egging, eating too much candy, getting separated from your hard-to-recognize friends...there are so many ways this gruesome holiday can go bad. Here's one you may not have thought of before.

One October in my twenties I was single and going through a dry spell. OK, large chunks of my twenties were dry, but that's another (hellish) story. I went out to dinner with a couple of girlfriends, and one of them brought her brother, Andrew. Andrew was, like me, a writer, but unlike me he actually had published several books.

Andrew and I hit it off. Sure, he was short, pudgy and bald, but at least he was funny. Ask my friend Peter--my main dating credo is "As long as he's funny." I believe the way he put it was, "Well, no one could accuse you of having a physical 'type.'" Frankly, Peter was always unable to differentiate between laughing with my dates and laughing at them. But I digress.

New Year's Eve in Vegas and Times Square (Videos)

New Years Eve Times Square 2007

A first person view of what it was like on New Years Eve in New York's Times Square, police, security checkpoints, crowd stampedes, cheers, the countdown and chaos.

Las Vegas New Year's Eve

Girls going wild on the Las Vegas Strip on New Year's Eve! They may be easy on the eyes, but they're not so easy on the ears!

The REAL New Year's Eve

What really happens in Times Square on December 31. It's not as glamorous as network television makes it appear. Beware the bodily fluids!

New Year's Eve 2005-2006

This footage was shot around New York, including Times Square, December 31, 2005-January 1, 2006. A strong argument for staying home and watching it instead of actually being there!

New York at the Holidays

OK, maybe I'm not a New Yorker any more. Just a few blogs ago I was kvelling (that means gushing to you non-New Yorkers) about how great the city is and how I couldn't wait to get there for the holidays. Well, once I got there, I couldn't wait to get out.

I went to New York this past weekend. It's a week before Christmas, so I figured, Prime Time. And apparently a lot of other people figured the same thing. The place was claustrophobia-inducing.

I know, I know--it's always crowded and noisy. This was different. This was a trampling waiting to happen. There were lines around the block for those trendy cupcake places. Lines to get into Marc Jacobs on Bleecker. Lines for mediocre brunch spots. Lines to go past the department store Christmas windows. Lines to cross the street--and four policeman at each midtown intersection to make sure no one cheats. Lines for ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Lines to take pictures of ice skating at Rockefeller Center. (And by the way, a very unimpressive tree this year. Make a little effort!)

Thousands upon thousands of tourists. And the worst part? I was one of them, with my camera and my naive dreams, like one of those Today Show nuts (at least I didn't have a homemade sign saying hi to Mom!). I asked my native friends to come with me and got shut down. They know what I used to: stay away from midtown in December. (They can't stay away from the Village because they live there, but they can certainly stay away from the cupcakes and Marc Jacobs.)

I never got close to any department store windows. I couldn't even bring myself to try. I headed north, toward Central Park, before I came to my senses and remembered I had to go to the Nintendo store for a new Wii remote. Of course, that's a block south of the tree and the crush that goes with it. And even more of course, they were sold out.

The weather was unseasonably warm, which probably increased crowd size. It was in the 50s all weekend, just like in Los Angeles (the difference is that in Los Angeles everyone was complaining about how cold it was). One more reason to dream of a White Christmas: maybe a cold snap will get all those OTHER people off the streets.

Christmas - and Chanukkah - in New York

I'm a New Yorker. Sure, I live in Los Angeles; in February it will be 20 years since I made the move. But while I may be in LA, I'm not of LA. I yearn for New York and have a physical need to check in regularly.

And I've kept up. I read the New York Times, New Yorker and New York Magazine every single week. I resent that NY1 isn't available on DirecTV. I met with someone in the development office of NYU, my alma mater, just two weeks ago.

My New York friends are the ones I came of age with, and they know me in ways my LA friends don't (and that's a good thing--not everyone should remember the way you looked in braces or the way you smelled first time you got drunk). Perhaps most importantly, my brother and sister and their families are both there. (My mom now lives in Puerto Rico, but that's a topic for another blogging day. Caution: hellish Thanksgiving story ahead.)

In short, if I could have figured out a way to have a dog, a car, a tree and a second bedroom in NYC, I might still be there. But I couldn't so I'm not. Instead, I head east on a seasonal basis: spring and fall because they're so perfect there, summer because there's no school schedule to work around. And in December, I need my Christmas-in-New York fix.

I haven't had that fix in a while and it's time. I want to shop. More specifically, I want to window shop at the big department stores like Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman. OK, I admit I'll go inside, too. I want to see friends and family. I want to deliver Christmas cookies and gifts personally.

So I booked a trip the only days I could get away this month. And I blew it. The first night I'm gone is the first night of Chanukkah.

Yes, despite my Christmas planning, I'm also a Cohen, and we celebrate both holidays around our house. My favorite part of gift-buying is crafting the eight nights of gifts for my son. I start strong on Night One, then psych him out with a book or socks on Night Two. I drop hints about one thing then give another on Night Three. And so on. I like the lighting of the candles and the (for me, phonetic) recitation of the prayer. But this year I'll be away from my family for the first two nights. Oy, the guillt.

I'm off right now to buy something really exceptional for Night One. I might even have to pick up something better than usual for my husband. He doesn't track the holidays and hasn't yet figured out that my trip coincides with Chanukkah, so I still have time to figure out how to make up for my absence.

Over-spending: the next best thing to being there.