What Do You Mean, the Meeting is Cancelled?

Am I understanding this correctly? In Chicago, AA meetings get cancelled on holidays? I guess so. I am sure it is meeting specific, because every meeting is independent in a sense - but cancelled, really? Are you sure? Are you kidding? In Ann Arbor, where I got sober, a holiday is like one great big giant continuous meeting. Meeting after meeting at the Alano Club. One would suppose that such a thing happens here, but where? I haven't heard about it and these are the types of things that get announced. Instead, all I hear about are meeting cancellations. I am horrified at this. Why, because I want to go to a meeting tomorrow night. But even more importantly than that, I would hate to be the newcomer who needs a meeting, is too afraid to pick up the phone, doesn't know who to call anyway, knows of a meeting, shows up, and no one else is there.

Service work people! I would give up any holiday, I would give up any plans etc. to make sure a meeting happened when it was supposed to, for that one person who needed to show up. I remember one time back in Ann Arbor, only myself and one other person showed up for an ACOA meeting. It happened to be my brother and I, and we couldn't really have a meeting, just the two of us - but damn it, we were there. I firmly believe that meetings should not be cancelled. Not on Thanksgiving, not even on Christmas, not ever. As a member of this fellowship - we have an obligation to show up. Last year, on Christmas Day, the first thing I did was go to a meeting and I was damn grateful that I was not the only one there.

My concern of course is that there is no real way to know about these meeting cancellations. What about the newcomer specifically, or the visitor? What about the person who isn't a regular at the meeting, and misses the announcement. The person who isn't on the phone list and doesn't really know anyone yet, so again, he or she misses the announcement. The person who is too terrified to call the main Chicago AA office, which by the way is closed and therefore useless on Thanksgiving anyway. The person who doesn't know to call the Intergroup hotline number, and when they figure out to call it, they find out that the person on the other end of the phone doesn't have clue which meetings were cancelled anyway. It seems to me rather difficult to find a meeting on a holiday here and I find that extremely disturbing.