'Tis a season

At some point in the not too distant past, I came to realize that I far preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas, as far as holidays go. Thanksgiving had all the things I like about a holiday -- getting together with my family, traditional food, time off, relaxed good cheer -- while Christmas had too much of what I don't like -- stress, rampant consumerism, feelings of dark, desperate inadequacy.

Sometime after that realization, my family agreed on all this and agreed that we would just get presents for the kids and concentrate on the good food and relaxed good cheer otherwise. So the X-mas stress has mostly gone away, and now I find that the season sneaks up on me and leaves me with a bewildered "Huh?" stuck embarrassingly to one lip like a forgotten morsel of fruitcake. Is it ... is it Christmas now?! I feel like the village idiot, trying to figure out what all the excitement is about. I mean, it's gotten to the point where I've forgotten how stressful and horrible the season is, and yet I can't get into the whole jolliness thing either. Instead I sit here with the vaguely panicked sense that I should be feeling something.

So what's a village idiot to do? Hm. Maybe a bottle of port would distract me in an appropriately seasonal way. Yeah, that's the spirit! Here's to the solstice and longer days!