{"id":6929,"date":"2012-12-28T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=6929"},"modified":"2012-12-28T06:00:56","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T12:00:56","slug":"winter-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=6929","title":{"rendered":"Winter is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ned-Stark-Game-of-Thrones\"
Fortunately I don’t have to make the same kinds of hard decisions as Ned Stark, but Winter and the holidays don’t have to be grim.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are quite a few words that can describe the beginning of Winter and the year-end holidays: dread, lonely, cold, snowy, warm, happy. I\u2019ve run through the gamut in my time on Earth, and in general I find this time of year to be pretty nice.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the most honest thing I can say about it. I like Thanksgiving and Christmas because there are good meals that go along with seeing family. (I like my family.) It\u2019s not really about presents, or at least it hasn\u2019t been for fifteen or twenty years. I like stuff, don\u2019t get me wrong, stuff is good. It\u2019s just that I\u2019m in a position now where I can get almost any stuff I want when I want it. I don\u2019t have to wait for the holiday or my birthday or Father\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fortunate that the business I work in is closed during the holiday season, too. That means I get\u00a0an extended vacation of a week or sometimes a little more every year beyond any time I take off in spring or summer. Again it\u2019s time to spend with my family and do things like read or go to a movie.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My memories of the holidays as I grew up were always good, too. I don\u2019t have any desire to ever again overdose on hot ham with cherry sauce (an Easter dish if I remember), but I look forward to my family\u2019s non-traditional Christmas dinners. We\u2019ve had lasagna, chili, soups, and all kinds of comfort foods. We do the traditional turkey in November but give the goose and the turkey a break in December.<\/p>\n

It just seems right, somehow.
\nMy wife bakes during the holidays. And she\u2019s very, very good at it. Cookies are everywhere in this house.This year she took some of those cookies and made me run out in the cold to ensure the garbage men, the recycling guys, and the mailman all got some. Every one of them was stunned and grateful.\u00a0The holidays are a great time to show everyone around you how you feel about them. Usually in little and sometimes unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

Yeah, they\u2019re paid pretty well for tough work but it\u2019s nice to be appreciated isn\u2019t it? I wondered how many people did something small for the people who come to the house because you ask them to. Not very many, I\u2019m sure. It made me feel good to hand the tins of cookies to those guys then come in to the warm house.<\/p>\n

Using words to describe those feelings doesn\u2019t diminish them, but it\u2019s impossible to convey every feeling that rises with such acts. It\u2019s Winter and a time to reflect and rejuvenate. I\u2019m carrying those feelings with me, and you can be sure they\u2019ll find a way into everything I write in the coming year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are quite a few words that can describe the beginning of Winter and the year-end holidays: dread, lonely, cold, snowy, warm, happy. I\u2019ve run through the gamut in my time on Earth, and in general I find this time of year to be pretty nice. That\u2019s the most honest thing I can say about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[349,460,515],"class_list":["post-6929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-end-of-the-year","tag-gifts","tag-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}