We all love holidays, because they punctuate our lives with exclamation marks.

They pile up at the end of the year, rushing to fill the last bit of time before the year gives up and runs out.

Halloween, with its three days: All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows’ (All Saints’) Day, then All Souls’ Day for the rest of us.

A few weeks off, then Thanksgiving. We invented an American turkey day in the shadow of ancient pagan celebrations for the dying year, which leads to Christmas, chosen by default because the “pagans” had already claimed it and it was just easier to compromise and combine the two with heavy symbolism of one religion taking over from another.

And then the Eve from one year to the next, the last ditch effort to cling to the final moments of the dying year like a dropping ball counted down to the very last second.

Stay up late, drink too much, then wake up into another chance to do it all again, and, maybe this time, better.

Then we take a break, because it’s still winter and we’re not going anywhere.

We sprinkle a few holidays here and there because we need a break, before the orgiastic end, and then we do it all again.