Not To Grinch, Here

     Nope.  I wouldn't want to diminish anyone else's enjoyment of the holiday season.  Humans have been celebrating getting through the longest night of the year for about as long as they've been keeping track of the seasons, and the layer upon layer of religious and civil celebration this time of year has accumulated is truly a marvel.

     Dark days and long nights are hard.  True when you're a skin-clad hunter-gatherer, true when you live in the 21st Century with a talisman in your pocket that connects to the whole world, faster than thought.*  We darned well ought to have a celebration.

     But I've got to tell you, it's a sucky time of the year for me.  I get short-tempered.  I feel a lot of stress.  And it's not helping that my employer's yearly employee review process starts in mid-December, with an essay-type "Justify Your Continued Existence" form due by the end of the month, followed by three to four months of waiting for the process to grind through the system and come back to you.  The whole thing is designed for upwardly-mobile employees, with the benign intent of discovering ambition and talent -- a great idea for the young but frustrating when you're 65 and have been firmly told you're never going to get any higher on the ladder.

     Other than my siblings, I have no close family left.  The big holiday gatherings ended as my mother's health faded and I find that I miss them, stressful though they were.  I stopped marking the season at home decades ago; my house is cluttered enough without trying to shove in a fire-risk tree and cat-poisonous flowers and my life is cluttered enough without pressure to feign a holiday spirit I do not feel.

     I wish you a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays.  I wish myself a successful endurance of the worst time of the year.
______________________________
* And we've got the social media to prove it.