Election Anxiety: The Results Are In. Now What?

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I recently saw a television segment about election anxiety. Now that the votes are counted. You’re either jumping with joy or throwing stuff at the TV. Zealous voters worry about the future, obsess over the results, and wonder how the country will survive another two years.

I have a confession. I don’t spend much time worrying about elections.

It’s not that I don’t care about politics. I make a few donations to candidates in other states. I live in Boulder, Colorado, in Congressional District 1. Both are reliably blue. There’s not much election drama here.

My home state, Wyoming, sits at the opposite end of the political spectrum and is solidly red.

Depending on where you live, the election results can either reassure you that the country is on the right track or convince you that civilization, as we know it, is coming to an end.

I have friends at both ends of the political spectrum who have a hard time accepting election results when their candidate loses. My red friends have spent years, and continue, complaining about Joe Biden. My blue friends have had plenty to say about Donald Trump since 2016.

Each side is convinced the other has taken the country in the wrong direction.

We need a national cooling-off period after every election. No political commentary, no cable news, no arguments on social media.

I, for one, need a few weeks to catch my breath.

Of course, that would require people to stop talking about politics on Facebook. I’m not sure we’re ready for that level of national sacrifice.

Now, before we’ve finished processing the election results, the holidays have been arriving since October.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s Eve are supposed to bring us together. Instead, they become chances to revisit the election with relatives we haven’t seen since the last family gathering, and to remember why we haven’t seen them.

In the spirit of holiday harmony, I offer a few suggestions for coping with election anxiety.

Seven Tips for Surviving Election Anxiety

1. Turn off the television.

You’ve watched the election coverage. You’ve heard pundits explain the results, analyze them, and predict what they mean for the future of the republic.

You’ve also heard the pundits who predicted the opposite outcome explain why they’re still right.

Give yourself a break. The country survived before cable news, and it will survive without your constant supervision.

2. Avoid political discussions at family gatherings.

This sounds simple, but it takes planning.

If Uncle Fred pipes up about why the election was a disaster, ask him about his vacation. If that doesn’t work, ask him about his health. If that doesn’t work, offer him a piece of pumpkin pie.

Should all else fail, mention that the Buffalo Bills are playing the Kansas City Chiefs. If your relatives are football fans, that might substitute one argument for another.

Choose your battles carefully.

3. Get some exercise.

Shoveling snow has several advantages. It gets you outside, burns calories, and gives you something productive to do with all that nervous energy. You might help a neighbor who isn’t particularly interested in your political opinions.

Besides, it’s difficult to argue about the election when you’re trying to keep from slipping on the sidewalk.

4. Remember that friends who vote differently are only trying to get through life.

I know. This is a radical idea.

I’ve discovered that a person who voted for the candidate I can’t stand can also be a decent neighbor who helps me shovel snow.

We may disagree about politics, but we can still share a laugh, help one another out, and enjoy each other’s company.

Democracy requires us to accept that other people get to vote, too. Even those who didn’t get the memo on how to vote correctly.

5. Find something else to worry about.

If you really need something to occupy your mind, try assembling a piece of IKEA furniture without reading the instructions.

You could start a new hobby, take up jigsaw puzzles, or attempt to understand the instructions for that new electronic device.

Life offers plenty of challenges that don’t require watching another panel of political commentators argue about the future of America.

6. Don’t confuse worrying with doing something useful.

If the election results concern you, respond in a constructive way. Volunteer for an organization, help a neighbor, or support a cause.

You can care about the country without spending every waking hour worrying about it.

Worrying rarely changes the outcome. The best response is to take a deep breath, make a plan, and get on with your life.

7. Remember the turkey.

Thanksgiving comes with its own built-in remedy for anxiety: a large meal followed by a nap.

The tryptophan-laced turkey might not resolve your political concerns, but it could make you too sleepy to argue about them.

If cousin Zach insists on bringing up the election while you’re digesting dinner, you can always close your eyes and pretend you’re asleep.

Remember to gently snore. You don’t want your sister to check your breathing and call 911.

There’s More to Life Than Elections

Elections have real consequences. Citizens have legitimate reasons to worry about their rights, livelihoods, and the country’s future. Telling them not to worry doesn’t make those concerns disappear.

There’s a difference between caring about what happens to our country and allowing election results to consume our lives.

We can stay informed without remaining perpetually outraged. We can disagree without turning every conversation into a political argument. We can spend time with people who see the world differently without treating every disagreement as a threat to the future of civilization.

As we head into the holiday season, we could all use less political combat and

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Thank you for your response. ✨

more human connection.

We don’t have to abandon our convictions. We need to remember that there’s more to life than election outcomes.

There will be other elections. There will be another round of political advertisements, campaign promises, pundit predictions, and Facebook arguments.

In the meantime, there’s turkey to carve, pie to eat, and political discussions to avoid with Uncle Fred.

Happy holidays. May your favorite team win, your turkey turn out moist, and your relatives keep their political opinions to themselves, at least until the dishes are done.

The Origin of Jack-o’-Lantern: From Turnip to Pumpkin

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Every October, Americans head to the pumpkin patch, pick out a nice round pumpkin, carve a toothy grin into it, and stick a candle inside. It’s a national Halloween ritual. This year, my pumpkin came from the Costco pumpkin patch.

A close-up view of a sculpted head resembling a mask, with rough textures, a subtly painted face, and exaggerated facial features, including deep-set eyes and a prominent mouth.
Irish ghost turnip

Here’s a little Halloween trivia that might make you look twice at the produce aisle: The original Jack-o’-lanterns were turnips.

That’s right. Before pumpkins became Halloween celebrities, turnips did the heavy lifting.

The tradition goes back to Ireland and Scotland, where people carved frightening faces into turnips, potatoes, and other root vegetables. They hollowed them out, placed a candle or burning ember inside, and set them near doorways or windows.

The lanterns provided light, but their frightening faces also protected against wandering spirits. According to Celtic tradition, the night of October 31 marked Samhain, a time when the boundary between the living and the dead supposedly grew thin.

Who was Jack?

According to Irish folklore, Jack was a rather unpleasant fellow who tricked the Devil not once, but twice.

In one version of the story, Jack persuaded the Devil to turn himself into a coin so Jack could pay for a drink. Instead of spending the coin, Jack slipped it into his pocket beside a silver cross, trapping the Devil.

Jack eventually released him after extracting a promise that the Devil wouldn’t claim his soul.

Unfortunately, Jack’s cleverness didn’t earn him any points after death. Heaven wouldn’t take him. So Jack found himself wandering in darkness, carrying a lump of burning coal the Devil had tossed him.

Jack placed the coal inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his way.

The legend of Jack of the Lantern was born. Over time, the name became Jack-o’-lantern.

The National Museum of Ireland displays a plaster cast of a carved turnip lantern donated in 1943. The original came from County Donegal and represented a local Halloween tradition around 1900.

Enter the pumpkin.

When Irish immigrants arrived in America during the 19th century, they brought their Halloween traditions with them. They soon discovered an abundance of pumpkins.

A cartoon depicting a man presenting various creatively designed jack-o'-lantern alternatives to a panel of three men at a conference table, with one man expressing disappointment over abandoning traditional pumpkins.

Pumpkins were plentiful, much larger and easier to carve than turnips. Imagine trying to scoop out a turnip with a kitchen spoon.

The pumpkin replaced the turnip as America’s Halloween decoration of choice.

Today, we spend millions of dollars on pumpkins, carving kits, decorations, and pumpkin-flavored everything. The humble turnip lost its place in Halloween history.

The next time you carve a pumpkin, remember its less glamorous predecessor.

The Jack-o’-lantern didn’t begin as a cheerful orange pumpkin sitting on a suburban porch. It began as a sinister-looking root vegetable intended to frighten away the spirits of the dead.

The turnip deserves a little recognition.

I’ll stick with my pumpkin.

Navigating Holidays Post-Halloween: Thanksgiving & Black Friday

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Halloween is over.

The candy has disappeared from the grocery-store shelves. The Halloween pop-up stores have packed themselves into cardboard boxes and vanished for another year. America has moved on to the next commercial opportunity.

I’ve never been much of a Halloween celebrant. Maybe I’m just not comfortable messing with the spiritual unknown. You never know what you might accidentally invite into the neighborhood.

When I do dress up, I have a reliable fallback: Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, the fastball-chucking relief pitcher from the baseball movie Major League, starring Charlie Sheen. The costume requires little more than a Cleveland Indians shirt and cap, horn-rimmed glasses, and an attitude problem. I can manage that.

Now Halloween is behind us, and we’ve arrived at the serious winter holidays.

First up: Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving has gradually become a second-tier holiday for me. That wasn’t always the case. Like many things, it changed when I left home for college.

My sophomore year, a classmate invited me to his house for Thanksgiving. In my junior year, I stayed on campus. Foreign students and those who lived too far away joined me in the peace and quiet of an almost empty campus. By senior year, I must have made it back to Laramie.

I don’t remember having a grand Thanksgiving epiphany during those college years. I discovered that Thanksgiving could happen without my family gathered around the table.

That may be one of the things that happens when you grow up. Holidays that once seemed permanently attached to home and familiar family traditions become movable. You leave home, and the holidays follow you, but they don’t necessarily look the same.

My most memorable Thanksgiving was attending the Rolling Stones in 2005. I worked the CU – Nebraska football game that used to be played the day after Thanksgiving when both teams played in the Big 12 Conference.

Then comes Black Friday, the annual commercial prelude to Christmas, when the country collectively decides that nothing says “peace on earth” quite like getting up before dawn to fight over a discounted Sony PlayStation.

I’ve never been much of a Black Friday shopper, either. At this point in my life, if I really need something, I’m better off buying it before Thanksgiving rather than standing in line at 5 a.m. with people who have been waiting all night for a 70-inch screen. I went to Radio Shack. When they went out of business, I didn’t go out on Black Friday.

But this year, I’m approaching Black Friday differently, as I did a few years back at the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver.

On Black Friday, I’m releasing Not Exactly Holy, a devotional for the not-so-religious.

It seemed appropriate.

After all, the holiday season has always mixed the sacred and the commercial, the meaningful and the ridiculous. Thanksgiving asks us to pause and be grateful. Black Friday tells us to buy something. Christmas brings a little of both.

In the middle of all that, there’s room for a devotional written for people who aren’t entirely sure what they believe, or who don’t fit neatly into any usual religious boxes.

That’s why I wrote Not Exactly Holy.

Consider it my small contribution to the holiday season.

No assembly required. No early-morning shopping. As far as I know, no spiritual consequences.