I sit on the floor of my living

room with candles lit all around me. My family is all tucked in their

beds as I solitarily take this sentimental journey. My legs fit snugly

under the coffee table as I pull tattered photographs out of an old grocery

store box filled with memories. Nat King Cole plays mildly on the stereo.

I smile and recall as my eyes

study the pictures yellowed from age and neglect. As I thumb through the

photos of laughing kids dressed in sheets for Halloween, kids riding on

the backs of tortoises at the San Diego Zoo, kids on their way to that

first day of school; I realize, quite pathetically, I am remembering someone

else's life.

My life has not been quite

so sentimental. If I were to share stories of my youth, struggles and

triumphs from my past, there wouldn't be emotional background music playing

while James Earl Jones narrated, nor would I want there to be. Though

all of us in our most desolate times might dream that our favorite, cheesiest

song something by Barry Manilow or Celine Dion would be sung over our

life story, that's more about sentimentality than reality. But you know

what I am discovering? Reality bites.

As we enter another season

of Thanksgiving, Christmas and, the many showings of "It's a Wonderful

Life" that spread the distance between the two, should we be sentimental?

Especially this year? Thirty-three days we have, of family, food, shopping,

giving and getting. This year, add empathy, fear and confusion. Being

made to eat at the kids' table this season hardly seems something to complain

about.

But for some reason, it seems

like a lot of things this holiday season are more labored. We are all

going through the motions. Like a lion who plays with his prey, we instinctively

know how snare a bargain or avoid a fruitcake, yet this year things feel

different. Emotionally, everyone is on edge. How else can you explain

a billion-dollar airport being shut down by an overzealous football fan.

Everyone's gone nuts. Fake, powered snow doesn't have the same allure.

That is why I am throwing up

my hands and having the best Christmas season of my life. I probably have

entered the holiday season tentatively every since I was heartbroken as

a child to get a yahtzee game for Christmas, when my twin brother got

a shotgun. Though that memory is probably no, assuredly inaccurate, I,

like a lot of people, have found stupid, moronic reasons to hold back

enjoying the only season that allows and even encourages turkey freebasing

and chocoholicism.

I have been the poster boy

for "Let's wait and see if this Christmas is any better." But,

all my Christmases have always been great; I've just been spoiled.

For the next 33 days, the days

between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we should show the world, our neighbors

and especially ourselves that we are going to have the time of our lives,

that we are going to be the fun, silly people we have always heard about

or detested. We should be the ones wearing the hat, stringing the lights

and putting a red and green sweater on our Scottie dog. If you don't have

a Scottie dog, buy one. Then put a sweater on him. Let's just have some

fun.

Go to Blockbuster Video and

rent "Christmas Vacation." Revel in the genius that was Clark

Griswold. Even the commercialism has become tiresome. Where I once laughed

at the electric razor that skied down a slippery slope, I now cringe to

see yet another promo disguised as a Christmas card ... when we don't

need that to have fun!

We are Americans. From the

beginning we could start a war by throwing a tea party. Let's live again.

Leave some money in the bank, gather up your memories, you kids and your

Scottie dog and just celebrate the magic number 33. If we can't do it

now, can we ever again?