...1962 ...1963 ...1967...

Christmas dinner at St. Anthony's free soup kitchen in San Francisco. A lot better than you'd expect, too, heaping plates of real turkey, not that crap cut off a turkey roll, and dressing, and cranberry sauce. ...1968 ... 1969...

...1980 ...1981... Y'all wouldn't be interested in any of these.

Just normal, everyday Christmases, then gradually I slowed down and stopped celebrating Christmas at all.

...1995... One Christmas I wrote a little thing patterned after a feature series that used to run in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine: Ferdinand Feghoot. These were always very short shaggy dog stories that ended in a terrible pun. The punch line of my story was, "Wee Vishnu, a merry crushed moose, and a hoppy Jew near."

Imagine my surprise when it bounced back to me a year later! Now, I don't mind that, I sent it out over the Internet without any copyright protection so it was free to go where it wanted. But it was rewritten! Somebody, who probably didn't know what a Feghoot was, had taken old FF out of it.

Another year I suggested we ought to ban three Christmas carols each December, sort of like retiring their jerseys, only this wouldn't have been an honor. I suggested "The 12 Days of Christmas," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "The Chipmunk Christmas." Several people took me to task for that, saying they still enjoyed the (to me)

wretched excess we indulge each holiday season. That was cool, too, I knew how you felt, I used to get deeply into Christmas, more often than not, before I was finally bludgeoned into my present hermit-like torpor.

Oh, there she goes. The Spirit of Christmas Past doesn't care to listen to me whining about so-called "holiday" music. And here comes that big, fat slob, the Spirit of Christmas Present. (When I was a kid, I thought he was the Spirit of Christmas PRESENTS. My kind of Spirit!) Well, YOU'LL just have to listen to the rest of the music rant, Spirit ....