‘Tis the season for food, family, and endless, “So, do you have a boyfriend?” questions from Grandma and every aunt and uncle you encounter. It’s time for the reunions with your extended cousins, who bring new significant others (potential fiancés?) to the parties, only to remind you that you are as single as they come. The combination of the cold weather and the holiday season leave many people wanting to be with someone…. at least during the holiday season. Hence, the title “holi-bae.”
Holi-bae: /noun/: a person who you have a temporary relationship-like fling with for the duration of the holiday season. These holi-baes are usually end up being the most convenient and accessible people in your life—the ones in your politics or English class that occasionally ask you for your notes or to compare homework answers with. But when it comes down to the facts, why is it that when it gets cold out our desire to be in a relationship grows?
History has shown that our earliest ancestors “paired off” for survival when the days got darker earlier and the weather got colder. Sharing body heat was a way to stay alive, and as Dr. Wendy Walsh put it, “We’re walking around in DNA that’s hundreds of thousands of years old. In our anthropological past, there was less food and resources [available], and hunter-gatherers’ survival happened better if you were in a pack, if you were coupled up … [This] increased survival of any offspring that came out of it.”
However, modern day cuffing season isn’t exactly for the purpose of survival. There is a peer pressure aspect that comes with attending holiday parties—you are almost expected to bring a “plus one.” Everywhere we look during the holidays there are commercials or advertisements to “buy something great for your significant other.”
This year during cuffing season, if you find yourself at a holiday party without a holi-bae, grab yourself a drink and the best food you can find and own your table for one. Use the money you would have bought a boyfriend a gift with to treat yourself to a yoga class. And, when you get home from yoga, grab yourself some chopped wood, matches, and newspaper. There’s no need for someone to share body heat with if you can build your own fire.