Every day is for fucking, first and foremost. Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean your regular, daily, corporeal needs aren’t still mounting up and making their demands, holding your stable, satiated self for ransom under threat of death if you don’t give in and rub one out (with or without your other person of choice). Don’t deny your needs! Make time, make space, make sexual play a priority frequently, not just when it’s convenient.

And especially when things are stressful and oh-so-complicated on so many levels do you need release just that much more. Is it hard for you to be alone? Use sex to alleviate that. Do you return to where you grew up only to find that your family has constructed yet another drama which re-features all the key players from all the key scenes in the history of your life? Use sex to get it outta your system.

Bring with you someone who will be willing to play—and with whom you can brainstorm good ways to get laid without infringing upon your family’s combination of uptight silence around sex—meaning, don’t force them to confront that you’re doing the nasty while everybody else is suffering through your least favorite Uncle’s fifth spiked eggnog.

Can you borrow the car for a few hours and go for a drive, perhaps out to that favorite spot of yours from high school? Can you discover a new favorite spot? Can you rent a seedy motel by the hour? Can you slip into the shower together? Does the room you’re staying in have a lock on the door?

Beyond that, these particular holidays, the “holy” days that come in the darkest time of year, are such an important time for connection, intimacy, brightness, light. The winter solstice marks the day with the shortest amount of daylight and the very longest night. It’s also the turning point that marks the return of the light and the ramp up to the longest day of daylight over summer solstice.

What can you leave behind in this darkness, what can you illuminate now that the light is coming back? What can you do to honor the return of the sun? Light candles, burn fires, string electric lights around your home to shimmer and sparkle during these dark times.

It is a wonderful time to reflect on the year past—what worked, what didn’t work—and to plan for the future, to make wishes for what’s to come, to set one’s heart upon a goal, to renew the best of our intentions. As Thoreau once wrote, “In the long run, we only ever hit what we aim at.”

What’s your aim?

And while we’re at it, what’s your aim for your sex life? Are you satisfied? Dissatisfied? Do you find yourself craving what you used to have? Did you trade out in favor of something more stable and less satisfying—as if that isn’t as old as sex itself— or do you want something less tumultuous and more exciting? Do you want new explorations, new revelations about your life? Just knowing what it is that you want is at least half of getting it, in my experience.

So aside from it brightening the darkness outside, aside from it being a wonderful way to work out family stress and relieve anxiety or depression about all those life-crashing things that seem to heap upon us all this time of year, sex is good for another reason: It keeps us in balance.

We’re oh-so-inclined to do all sorts of things this time of year in excess, like spend too much, and eat too much, and drink too much, and tell the truth too much, but if we keep in mind that we might get laid later, or that we want to get laid later, or that we really should make a serious attempt to keep the promise to that person who is waiting for us and relying upon us to get laid later, we might keep it in check a bit better. We might not go for that second or third or fifth piece of pie, or that second helping of potatoes and stuffing. We might feel a little better about keeping our bodies in shape, about going to the gym instead of to the mall for more of that pointless crap.

All that aside: When the holidays are over, when the light comes back and it’s spring equinox again and the light and dark are even, when your extended family is back in their lives doing their things, and you are back in yours doing your things, you may still be with whatever lovely creature or creatures that you’re going to be fucking over the holidays.

And when January shows up, you want to have someone to turn to, someone to explore with, someone to curl up on the couch and watch re-runs of silly sitcoms to pass the time, someone who will run out and grab pizza while you finish that really important thing that you have to do, someone who has your back.

Why not start now?