According to my handy Dilbert desktop calendar, today is Boxing Day (in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and all of Australia except the state of South Australia), Proclamation Day (in South Australia … maybe they don’t like boxes), St. Stephens Day (in Ireland), the first day of Kwanzaa (in the USA), and the fifth day of Hanukkah (in Israel and throughout the diaspora). I hope you bought appropriate greeting cards to cover all of those holidays.

Shouldn’t December 26 fit somewhere into the Twelve Days of Christmas formula? I’ve never understood exactly which day is the first day of Christmas, and which is the twelfth. Do they have to be consecutive? Maybe the twelve days of Christmas idea is all just a plot to do 50% better than the eight days of Hanukkah. Religious competition – if it’s good enough for war, it should be good enough for the greeting card industry.

This also has to be the busiest day of the year for trash pickup, and, of course, for the customer service desks in all those stores that failed to post “no refunds or exchanges” signs. Those same stores are now unveiling their after-Christmas specials, although from what I’ve read, some of those deep discounts were being offered earlier this month, in an attempt to avoid total retail failure. Or maybe they’re just maximizing their losses, so they can line up for bailouts too.

Well, whatever the rationale, it’s been a lovely Christmas time in northeast Florida. The sun has been shining, and the temperatures have been around 80 F. That allows us to tour through the neighborhoods in shorts and t-shirts, viewing all the lights and displays that make things truly festive. People really do go all out, and it doesn’t seem to be any less sparkling than in prior years, so I’m guessing the electric company is doing just fine right now.

As one gets older, the years do fly by more quickly. And so we prepare to greet 2009, when it seems just a few days ago that we welcomed 2008. Who knew, 12 months ago, that what we thought was an economic boom time was about to go bust? Who could have predicted that a previously liitle-known African-American senator from Illinois would become our President-Elect, that the NY Giants would rise up and smite the previously undefeated New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl, or that you would spend some small portion of your year reading something titled, “Nobody asked me, but…”

Let’s hope that the surprises that 2009 has in store for us are such that we will look back positively on them a year from now. Happy Holidays to all, no matter which you may be celebrating, and best wishes for the new year.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.