Gigglemas

I have been through all of the emotions one could feel about holidays: feared them, loved them, hated them, anticipated them, dreaded them and finally accepted them. It’s amazing how calm that can make you feel when you finally strip away the emotions and enjoy them for what they are — a relief. Winter is half over, you usually have enough nuts stored to live until Spring when you can gather more. You can stop fearing the weather and it’s ability to kill you with a single drought, artic blast, heat wave, tsunami, or Homeland Security threat, or whatever can bring the little lump of watery protoplasm you call yourself, down to base level. You give away some things to make people smile. It’s important to be able to make someone smile even for a moment. These are dark wintery days full of fear and a smile is a huge payoff for a lump of peat or a beeswax candle — lovely gifts in one era or another. Even if your dear ones smile at your stupidity in selecting the chia scarf or the candy bonsai — it is a smile nonetheless. You can’t make a mistake unless you give matches to Joan of Arc or something like that. A calendar to a death row inmate seems a little callous. So, here it is Smilemas, Halfway Holiday, Gigglemas, Smilegift or Giftgiggle. I just sit back with my eggnog and enjoy.