Baby It's Hot Outside

My yuletide spirit got on a horrendous start this year (fiasco with the tree, long story). I thought: sod it, I am too old for any of this ridiculous Christmas schmaltz. 

Yet the past few days I've been buying prezzies for more people than I can afford, searching for mince pies, listening to songs about white snow and cold air (when instead it's blazing hot/raining cats and dogs outside) and generally getting into the spirit of spreading joy and love and peace and all those other year-end buzzwords.

Sigh, what is it about this time of year, so easy to hate, so easy to put down, so tempting to ignore, that still manages to creep up to us?

(For a very long Christmas post I wrote last year, see here. Warning: some things have changed since then!)

P.S. Oh, it's Human Rights Day today, well yesterday, so Happy Human Rights Day to all humans out there!