Sunday, December 22, 2002

A story published today by the San Francisco Chronicle reports that San Francisco author Ethan Watters has been studying the changing traditions of single people for a book with the working title of "Urban Tribes of the Never Marrieds: Secrets of Community From an Unlikely Source."

The book, due out next year, was spawned by a sensational New York Times essay a year ago that circulated on the Internet like a virus.

Watters has seen holiday traditions among single people solidify over the years into what he calls "lovely alternatives."

"As I've studied the co-opting of holidays by young unmarried groups, I've noticed a progression," says Watters, whose other nonfiction books include "Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria."

"In the first few years of living in a city, unmarried people tend to go home, and then as they stay longer, there is a shift," he says. "The group slowly begins to co-opt the family holidays too."

Holidays normally considered sacred eventually start becoming days when the group gathers as its own family.

"The longer the group exists, the more they tend to declare themselves their own family of choice," he says.

And on Christmas Day, guess where Watters will be? Opening the doors of his Media Gulch home to his urban tribe, his adopted family.