The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

O’Rourke’s line is a characteristically sardonic take on American holiday rituals, treating seasonal “good cheer” as a socially sanctioned binge rather than a moral uplift. The joke hinges on inversion: the supposed climax of romance and celebration—New Year’s Eve—ends not with glamorous transgression but with the faintly absurd achievement of kissing one’s own spouse, as if ordinary marital affection requires intoxication to feel momentous. Beneath the humor is a critique of performative festivity and the way holidays can pressure people into exaggerated, alcohol-fueled displays of joy, intimacy, and sociability that contrast with everyday life.