Harbingers, holidays, and science. And my pants.

In case you hadn’t noticed, harbingers, not unlike celebrity deaths, tend to come in threes. Here in our little neck of the woods just outside the city that nobody calls the big apple, there are three major harbingers that Santa will be calling before you know it. The first is that the leaves have finally finished falling, the second is that the infestation of vermin called Canada geese has temporarily retreated, and the last is that the waist sizes of all my pants have also begun their annual retreat.

Despite the obvious iron-clad scientific basis for these seasonal events, my Lovely Bride never hesitates to question that last one about my pants. She has been known, for instance, to wonder aloud about how likely it is that my pants really do experience a cycle of holiday shrinkage and summer expansion. Moreover, she’ll even suggest that the Holiday Pants Effect is nothing more than me eating a lot of pumpkin pie.

Really? Does no one remember sixth grade science class? Cold makes things contract and heat makes them expand. Like pants. Sheesh, chicks and science. Anyway, happy harbingers, people!