Today Is The 2013 Super Bowl

The Super Bowl functions as a sort of unofficial American holiday.

Think about how you spend your other holidays. Most of them are spending gorging on turkey, candy, Christmas ham or Easter ham. God, we eat a lot of ham! But they're also spent with family or friends, watching specials, watching Thanksgiving football or just shooting the breeze with the people you love.

The Super Bowl combines many of those great holiday features. You pound chicken wings, slam down beers, watch television and enjoy it with those closest to you. It's a day for forgetting the rest of the year--or in our case, the season--and watching some honest-to-goodness NFL football, even if you don't like the teams all that much.

For me, at least, it has always been that kind of day. Throughout my childhood, we gathered by the warming glow of the television to catch the game, crack jokes about the commercials and leave a tiny graveyard of chicken bones on our plates. I watched the Falcons drop the '98 Super Bowl and had my dreams crushed that way. I watched my brother and dad celebrate two Packers Super Bowls that way. I watched the always awful New England Patriots actually win one, and heard my neighbor setting off fireworks in his backyard on a frigid February night because of it.

I've long since moved out of my parents' house, rolled through college and set aside some of those gameday traditions. I now have a house, a wife, a six-week-old boy and a heating bill that matches Qatar's GDP. I'll still be parking myself in front of the television with a couple of beers and the official brother of The Falcoholic. Holiday traditions should always be preserved.

How will you be spending the Super Bowl, and what are your fondest memories of Super Bowls past?