I've been a good boy up until now but I finally have to get in my rant about the holidays. I don't like them. The week before Thanksgiving I begin looking forward to my favorite day -- January 2nd. I have my reasons.

My holidays are haunted by those who are no longer here. The festivities they once enjoyed remind me of how ephemeral our lives are. I no longer wonder what I will find under the Christmas tree but rather whose chair might be empty when the world has turned again.

I mourn myself too. The innocent child who could believe in Santa and who could haul his sled up and down the hill all afternoon without being out of breath.

Then there is the commercialism, the organized, relentless promotion of greed which assaults us practically before Halloween has arrived. It is the season where plastic passes for hope, love and peace (or so we are told) and debts are piled on disappointments in a never ending cycle. There is always a larger TV than the one we can afford. In Hell it is eternally the last shopping day before Christmas.

Perhaps what I most remember as marking the beginning the Christmas season is the Thanksgiving dinner. My great aunt would invariably instruct us to save for her that part of the roast bird she referred to in her old fashioned manner as the Pope's nose. What more approprirate way to start the holidays then by wrapping your dentures around the tail end of a turkey?