Opinion: ‘Tis the season to be melancholy


I’m a bit worried, friends. The holiday season is off to an unsettling start.

First, my plan to chop down a Christmas tree (read: purchase an already cut and netted one at a local hardware store) with all four of our kids backfired when I mixed up two of their work schedules. Do we go without the 14-year-old baby of the family or the soon-to-be-in-college senior? Who do we love more? Tough choice made (though not as tough as we’d anticipated). We broke with tradition and proceeded on our tannenbaum hunt, one child short. Tear.

Once there, we easily decided on the tallest fir in the yard. But then my husband Doo broke another long-standing Wilson Yuletide ritual, that of precariously transporting said evergreen back to our house. He inquired about (gulp), and then signed up for (gasp), delivery! Something about how he didn’t want to deal with the sap and the frustration of strapping a 15-foot Frazier to our van. Coward. So, we drove home empty-handed, with no regard for the speed limit or the roundaabouts. How is that making memories?

The final lame horse in my off-brand December trifecta had to do with a dessert. I grew up loving my British grandmother’s fruit cake (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that it’s seeped in bourbon). My mom has continued making one just for me, but this time, she forgot the special marzipan icing. Now what am I supposed to do? Eat it plain? Un. Be. Lievable.

How am I to embrace the holidays with everything changing? And it’s not even a tinsel year! Truly unsettling, folks.

Peace out.


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