Christmas 2025

Merry Christmas to you, invisible audience! If you're reading this on December 25th, I thank you for pausing from however you are celebrating to check in.  I hope your season has been merry and bright. Mine has been, largely.  As one gets older, Christmas becomes more difficult.  All those memories.  They get heavier.  Achieve a certain mythos.  I always seem to try to recapture the magic moments of youth.  When I fall short, I get a bit depressed.

Honestly, the memories themselves, especially the golden ones, can cause some melancholia. Hearing the old songs really hammers it home.  Damn you, Bing Crosby!  Longing for those times with departed family and friends.  I try to regroup and focus on Christmas present, seeking to create new memories.  Hopefully ones that won't weigh that much heavier when I'm eighty, if I get that far.

Another thing that made me a little sad - last weekend my wife and I shopped at Kohl's.  We figured there would be fewer shoppers than at out local outlet mall and we were very correct.  Quite sparse.  Ample parking.  Plenty of room to get around.  The scene was downbeat.  Empty aisles.  Merchandise that appeared to have been untouched by consumer hands.  Sure, more people order online.  Maybe the store had been busier earlier in the season.  But I thought on all those years of last minute gift hunting in mall and drug store alike.  Flanks of frantic folks, hoping to find a treasure.  

It was stressful.  But also energizing and fun.  Plenty of spirit.  The scene at Kohl's was anemic by comparison.  Eerie, even.  Not quite as eerie as when we wandered our local Sears before it shuttered forever a few years back, but still somewhat desperate.  Yet still comforting.  There's something about department stores that comforts me.  I hope they do not disappear in my lifetime.

As always, I have to point out that Christmas is not all about consumerism and decorations.  I am a person of faith.  I won't proselytize just now.  But I do love all the adornments.  Careful not to put everything into merely them. 

Have a blessed Christmas.