It's the most wonderful time of the year...

People are always talking about how it doesn't feel like the holidays anymore but to that I say: earth to adulthood! You don't have time to stay home and watch and re-watch Love Actually or Home Alone, which means that your entire month of December isn't going to look like a gingerbread cookie dressed up in Gucci. The thing is, that's not acceptable. It is the holidays, after all. The best time of the damn year! Jesus was born. The Maccabees found light, and it's never not appropriate to remember the communitarian African philosophy by my main man Maulana Karenga.

So in the spirit of remaining grown up, appreciating having graduated from spending the majority of our time with our faces inside cereal bowls but also not compromising the youthful joy of the season, here's a short list of indulgences that will serve as a catch 22. On the one hand it will serve to remind you that it's the best time of the year, or if you're not there but know that intellectually, it's supposed to be the best time of the year, maybe that will push you to participate in the indulgences. Make sense?

In plain terms: just treat yourself. There are zero reasons you don't deserve it unless you are the fucking asshole in your office who makes everyone around you do your work for you! Why you do dis?

Never mind, it's the holidays. You deserve a treat, too. So:

1. Wear a tiara on date night with yourself this week. Go to the movies. This is a treat because you should feel like a damn queen when you take yourself out. Hi. Hello.

If, however, you're not into movies…

2. Just take yourself out for a glass of wine. Choose a place that feels decadent — like a fancy restaurant you'd only visit if your parents were in town and paying for the meal. Sit at the bar. Wear a sequined skirt.

Order a glass of wine and read your favorite piece of literature. If your idea of good literature sounds like shiterature, bring your favorite magazine.

3. Call in sick (unless, that is, you have a hunch you might get fired if you take any more time off this year!) and spend the day pretending you are yourself circa 1994. Watch all those awesome Christmas movies. Say it with me: "I made my family disappear." Remember what Liev Schreiber looked like when he was a cross dresser in Mixed Nuts. Listen to the Ella Fitzgerald Holiday station on Pandora. Buy a container of frosting and eat the whole damn thing.

3a. If you can't stay in because you might get fired, do dress the F up for work.

Buy yourself…

4. A pair of cashmere socks. Wear them around the house and know that they're there for no one but you and the comfort of your feet, which deserve to be implicitly warm whenever they damn well please.

5. A bouquet of flowers. It doesn't matter where from, just treat yourself the way you would want your significant other to treat you. Know why this is important?

I think you do.

Yes!

Because you are your significant other.

Maury Povich used to say at the end of his show on late morning weekday television, "Be good to yourselves and each other."

I like to say: be good to yourself first.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis