It's beginning to look a lot like ... oh, never mind
Stop me if you've heard this one already: I don't really like the holidays. Never have. Growing up in Missouri, it was always too cold to enjoy the two weeks off from school. I'd rather have been in school than at home. In college, December featured the mad scramble to come up with money for the next semester. In my business -- one in which we make a new product 365 days a year -- it means lots of people are taking time off, and deadlines are early, and people have to double up on their work so they can be off on the holiday, and, of course, not everybody can be off on the holiday, so somebody's holidays are less than happy.

My first raucous night as a page designer was Christmas 1989 -- the night Billy Martin died. The skeleton Christmas-night crew in the sports department of the Anytown Daily Bugle consisted of me, who had been laying out pages full-time for exactly two months, and the agate clerk, a guy who was really looking forward to getting out at 9 p.m. so he could continue his holiday drunk-fest. Then, about 8 p.m., we learned we had a Really Big Story. All the bosses were out of pocket. It was just me and Agate Guy.

We did it, and did it pretty well. He edited a few stories, I tore up the section front and assembled a nearly open inside page (which had heretofore been filled with the dregs of whatever we could fill it with, being that not much happens on Christmas.) We made our deadlines, readers in Anytown learned much about the tragic death of the acerbic former Yankees manager at the hands of a drunk driver (the only surprise was that Martin wasn't actually the drunk driver; he was the drunk passenger), and I had my first really bad night under my belt.

After I got married, Christmas in Anytown became a mad scramble to get from my relatives' celebration to The Wife's relatives' celebration. Neither side was ever happy with the amount of time we spent with it. Moving to Cincinnati in 1993 was a relief, if simply for relieving us of that obligation.

Now, of course, Christmas is great fun for the kids, but lots of hard work for Mom and Dad ... well, yeah, mostly Mom. The Wife is the Christmas Angel of our house, busting her ass to make sure everybody else has a happy and memorable holiday. We've been married long enough to have actual Christmas traditions -- a real tree (this year's model is still sitting on its side in the garage, waiting for us to decorate it), chocolate-covered pretzels and the world's best Chex Mix. The Very Cool In-Laws are flying in from Anytown this year, as they did every year when we lived on the Edge of America the last time. Bottles of wine will be opened, toys will be distributed, Santa will drop by, and we'll get ready to close out 2002 -- a year that seems to have gone by really, really fast, especially considering everything that has happened.

It's still been a semi-incomplete holiday. We didn't send any Christmas cards (we'll get to them next year, really); we didn't string lights up on the house; and that aforementioned tree still needs to be decorated. We're still trying to get settled here on the Edge. Our petition to postpone Christmas until Feb. 19 was denied, so we're doing the best we can with the energy we have.

There's no larger point to any of this, except: Here's a sincere wish to anybody who's reading this for all the best of the holiday season, whatever that means to you. Take a minute amidst all the hubbub to reflect on the things that mean the most to you, and resolve to make those things the things to which you give the most energy.