How to feel slightly less pathetic

MSN knows that single women, being the unloved, wretched creatures they are, must abhor the holidays. And they're here to help with advice on how to distract yourself this season and hopefully rectify your situation so that next year you'll be needing advice on how to get a better gift from your man.

The downside is they profile a widow. I just can't bring myself to be mean about that. Everything else is game.

Laura Polacheck, 45, never married, has her own holiday ritual, unchanged since her days as a young child. She watches It's a Wonderful Life on video. "It makes you reflect on what's important," says Polacheck of Salt Lake City.

What a clever and original way to spend time during the holidays! There's nothing about "It's a Wonderful Life" that could possibly make you feel bad about being single, especially not the part where Bailey's wife is shown as a miserable spinster in the alternate reality.

The winter holiday season, with its relentless media messages of romance, family togetherness, and material comforts, can be a downright bummer for the vulnerable single woman.

Single women, as we all know, do not have romance, material comforts, or family. They were born from air and live in the street, scrounging for scraps to eat and wondering if they will ever have their chance for the never-ending, breathtaking romance that is married life.

"There's no point in idealizing the holidays," says Verna MacCornack, PhD, a psychologist and psychoanalyst affiliated with Columbia University in New York. "And if you do have a miserable holiday, remind yourself: it's okay. Lonely Sundays pass. Blue Mondays pass. The holidays, too, shall pass."

Like sands through an hourglass... Yes, don't forget for a moment that time is passing ever so quickly and you without a man!

Again, I'm skipping the widow. I don't have the heart to pick on widows. Sorry, those who expect nothing but black-hearted cruelty.

"People always want to know who I'm dating," says the 26-year-old freelance producer. "I think it's just something that everyone can relate to."

Nah, they are wooing you over to the dark side.

The stories are boring. Onto the tips!

1. If you're feeling bad at the holidays, ask yourself why. "Many women find they replay a recording over and over. It goes something like this: 'I'm a loser. I'm alone. Everyone else is in a couple. Everyone else has children. This isn't fair,'" MacCornack says.

Articles like this about how single women have no friends and no family have nothing to do with this problem, of course.

2. Don't romanticize the holiday season or create a fantasy. "When I ask patients to describe the holiday they imagine, perspective begins to assert itself," MacCornack says. "Take the fireplace out of the fantasy if you don't own one. Work with what you have and truly make your own fantasy out of what's realistic."

How many times do we have to tell you to lower your standards? I suggest that you go out and find some random Joe to have an unfulfilling one night stand with. Don't set the bar too high and you can't be disappointed.

3. Ask yourself what you really want, and then make it happen.

I want a Ferrari. Give me the steps.

This might include a social mixer, a massage, an evening with your children at a show, or a long bubble bath with an old movie afterward.

Ferrari. Can I still ask Santa Claus?

Or it may simply mean participating in a charity fund-raising event or spending an afternoon reading to children in a hospital or orphanage.

That's not what I really want. That sounds like soul-building work and stuff. Ferrari, motherfuckers. How many times do I have to say it?

Or maybe you want nothing at all -- to let the day pass as any other?

*Beep* Wrong again. F-E-R-R-A-R-I.

"Many women forget to decide what they want," MacCornack says. "If you're living inside an advertisement, inside a fantasy, you're living inside someone else's dream."

Nah. There are genuine pleasures to be had driving a Ferrari. For one thing, they are pretty fast. And I would say, just as a guess, that even a caveman who had never seen one before would think they are sexy.

Anyway, I have a purse and a pair of shoes to match.

4. Make three holiday budgets -- one for time, one for money, one for energy.

Screw parceling out your energy over a series of lame parties with lame people. Blow the whole budget on something you'll remember! Three weeks worth of small talk is nothing compared to waking up next to that sexy drummer you've always been eyeing after a three day bender. Why not have a story that will make your married friends burn with jealousy?

5. Don't complain about being single. "Complaining about your status as a single person is not a topic of dinner conversation," MacCornack says.

A good start is to avoid articles like this that make you feel like a sexless freak.

"If you want to ask single gals over and wax your legs and complain about men, that's one thing."

After my girl friends and I finish waxing our legs, we don't complain about men. We put on nighties and beat each other with pillows. I often volunteer to be the one who goes topless.

6. Be friendly. If you're afraid you won't get invited to events, host one yourself.

As everyone knows, the people who don't get invited to parties are the ones who can get everyone in town to show up for theirs.

7. Remember: The holidays are not about you.

They're about people who are loved, which isn't you.

And they're not intended to make you feel bad.

Just this article.

"Make the holidays an outward-focused time, not an inward-focused time," MacCornack says. "If you reach out and do a community charity event, you may meet other like-minded people. Some of them may even be single men trying to escape their mother and her turkey."

Sidle up to the man and say, "I can out-turkey your mom any time. Wanna fuck?" And then you can proceed to the inward-focused part of your life, except that now you have a man you need to focus on.

8. Don't solve the holiday blues by overeating.

Good god, no! Do you want to be reading these articles a year from now? I think not! You want a man to love you, which you will never, ever, EVER get if you eat that piece of cheese at that holiday party.

In fact, I wouldn't be too light-hearted when considering the motives of your married friend offering you the tray of cheeses like she does all the married people even though she knows you're a desperate single woman. You know she's afraid that you'll try to steal her husband right there at that party and she's trying to fatten you up to sabatoge you. She always hated you, you know. Never trusted you. Deep inside, you know she wants you to be fat. Don't just turn the cheese tray down--throw it in her face! And then go fuck her husband. Hateful wretches, those married women, acting all normal like you can still be friends even though they got married.