Ho! Ho! Ack!

So the holidays are upon us. This time of the year always presents me with a wonderful opportunity to be venomous, self-righteous, and openly critical. And I'm not sure why, either. The holidays are a perfectly fine concept, when they are executed properly, which they usually are not. It seems to me that a lot of people try to jam a whole year's worth of good cheer into a couple of weeks. This is not only impossible, it usually makes everything worse as harried shoppers try to live up to an impossible ideal that exists in some holiday fable written long ago, in a simpler time, by a delusional opium addict.

I try not to buy into this madness. For a while, I raged against the machine. I was vociferously anti-holiday. I behaved like an enraged, psychotic elf. All this did no good. The holidays marched on inexorably. I stopped nothing. Nobody is interested in some horse-faced dude trying to rain on their parade.

The last few years I have tried experimenting with my own personal holiday spirit. This year I reflected on some people who made my life better by just being nice to me. There are a lot of people like that, believe it or not. I know, I know, it's a weird subset of the human race,but there are people out there who are pleasant by nature. When I'm pleasant people wonder what I'm trying to get out of them.

I thought about the coffee shop manager who has my drink ready every morning; the woman at the membership desk of my swim club who took the time to remember my name; the mailman who rings the doorbell when a letter doesn't fit in the box , instead of tossing it on the ground, which is what I would have done. I stuck a few bucks in envelopes and started passing them out. It's not the amount of money which is important. Well, it's a little important. Don't try this with $1 bills and expect a big smile, but don't bankrupt yourself, either.

I was surprised at the reactions. Apparently a lot of people don't do this.

My friend Shorty was quick to point out that if I was truly humble -- which I am not -- I would have done this anonymously. He spends a lot of time pointing out my defects. He is also very generous with my money. He has offered to deliver the envelopes himself, promising to give me the credit.

There will be no envelope under Shorty's Christmas tree this year.