Hi CB,
You made an interesting comment below I'd like to bring up and maybe lets dicuss. You said:
I personally find this time of year sheer hell where dealing with the cravings of my disease is concerned, so I understand how someone could hit their bottom during the holidays.

I was thinking about just that this afternoon as I was feeling a bit hormonal. I have a lot of seniors at work who have lost a spouse, a child of many siblings and peers, and for them this is not a happy time at all. I know there are a lot of not so seniors that are deeply troubled during this season for different reasons. Also, just the lack of sunshine, is a physical trigger for some to fall into depression. I’d imagine there are multiple reasons and explanations.

I know when my mother-in-law passed, (who had made Christmas really wonderful for us when we left the COG, and I knew I couldn't compete and I just missed her tremendously), I cried a lot. I felt that I had to push through and just make things nice and a bit of normal because I knew my kids were feeling the same. We had a lot of interesting talks that year.

Sometimes, now that all the kids are gone I feel that the pressure is on me to get it all together and it's sometimes lonely. George is a bit sour about it all for the most part and that doesn't help. I think he'd skip it al-together if he could.

But then I just love to write Christmas cards and say Hi to folks I haven't seen in way too long. I love to try to find a place to put out one more Nativity set or give one away. I love to read the Christmas story one more time in Luke and Matthew and look at the wonder of it as new again. I love lights and tinsel and a tacky piney Christmas tree covered with a lot of old and sometimes rather ugly ornaments that the clumsy hands of a 4 year old made a long time ago. I love a smoky midnight service at church and the Halleluiah chorus sung not too well at. I love lots of goodies I don't make any other time and finding new ones (I don't cook a lot anymore), and a house full of rowdy kids. I used to get a kick out of filling stockings, but I've let that one pass. Maybe I'll have to let a lot of this pass as I get older but I hope someone will pick up the torch.

I like to think of something I'd like to give my kids, grandkids, neices and nephews and in-laws that maybe they need or just would like to have. I'm not extravagant but there was a time we had nothing and we found a way to give something, just to say "I love you", one more time. I don't mind the mess, the expense, the trouble. I do sometims mind the lonliness. Somewhere in the chaos of it all I find an extra measure of Joy that I really don’t understand. Hum?