Welcome to that particularly insane American tradition of the holidays, this year following close on another insane American tradition called the general election. 

I don’t know about your house, but at Gregg House Hamilton seems to be on continuous loop, with someone always crying at it, even in the happy parts, or yelling at the founding fathers for their (in hindsight) poor decisions. 

Since my mother died when I was nineteen, I’ve found holidays, especially the winter ones, hard. I’m happy to go along with everyone else’s because I don’t have any memories about what their supposed to be.

It seems like we’re always celebrating something in Gregg House, either from all the diverse heritages under the roof or because our intern Darryl thinks a day without a holiday is a day without sunshine. I asked him how many December holidays are on the calendar. He’s still counting, but he’s sure it’s more than 100. So Happy Holidays, okay? 

All of them, however you celebrate.

If you don’t have your own meaningful holidays, celebrate other people’s (in a non-appropriative way). I’ve been doing it for years.  Since my mother died when I was nineteen, October through December has been a barren holiday wasteland. So I just join in the Gregg House celebrations. 

December seems all about light and enlightenment, at least for the holidays I’m familiar with. Music, too, drives away the darkness. Let’s sing along with The Therapy Sisters.

Most people who observe Advent start it on December 1, though Dianne tells me on the church calendar it starts the last Sunday in November. You can now count the days until Christmas with chocolate, hot sauce, beer, cheese, whisky, socks, tea, seeds, instant noodles, cat or dog treats, even electronic doodads to build. I would have liked that as a boy, but I think my mother’s lighting a set of four candles over the month and setting up a new Nativity figure each day (lots of sheep, shepherds, and angels) was closer to the original spirit of the season. But you do you and seek enlightenment and light however it makes sense to you.

You could even work through a cozy mystery advent calendar, where you just might find me and the Black Orchids gang.

Johnny’s not going to let me get away without mentioning that December is National Cat Lovers’ Month, a time to appreciate all the love and light cats bring to our lives. We have a shelter full, a clinic full, and twelve or so house cats, so we have many opportunities for appreciation. 

On Bodhi Day the Buddha achieved enlightenment. It could happen to you too. 

At some point—I never know when—Johnny announces Hanukkah, minor Jewish holiday that celebrates a small miracle. Back in the 2nd century BCE, the Jews found their temple profaned, with only enough oil to burn for one night. Some of us would have said, “Well, forget it. Can’t have an eternal flame with one day’s worth of oil.” Their response was to light the oil they had, which lasted for eight days, the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready. Today Jews (and I) light candles for eight days. So while you’re searching for enlightenment, look for the small miracles of encouragement, just enough to keep you going. Sometimes you have to look hard.

Pro tip: If you have cats, keep them out away from the hanukkiah, or menorah. Smokey sat on the Hanukkah candles one year. He survived with singed whiskers and burnt fur, which smelled to high heaven. I’m in favor of LED lights for candle-centered holidays.

Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year, falls just before Christmas. I’m glad for the reminder that there’s a limit to the darkness. From here on, the light returns, little by little. One way to mark the day is to burn a gigantic log in the fireplace, the Yule log, to get you through the long night. In Texas, we sometimes have to turn on the air conditioning if we’re going to use the fireplace. By common consent, if the temperature’s in the forties or above, we make a chocolate log cake instead of burning a wooden one.

National Flashlight Day falls on the same day, telling us we can make our own light. With Texas’ wobbly power grid, sometimes we have to. The most common cry through the winter (and summer) in our house is “Where’s the flashlight?”

We’ve had two power outages today, so I’m writing as fast as I can.

Then the holidays and their lights tumble forward in quick succession: 

• Christmas, with its big old star and all the Advent candles lit, announcing a birth, not only of Jesus but of something in our hearts (we hope)
• Kwanzaa with its seven-candles and virtues, reminding us of what we can be
• New Years, putting the old year to bed with a bang and welcoming the new one. Once again, with candles and firecrackers lighting up the sky (and our lives, we hope), we can start over. We can do better this time.

Let’s do it, okay?

The lights are flickering, so I’ll sign off by wishing you the happiest of all the light/enlightenment holi—