How do you like my Christmas card this year? You see those beautiful snowy woods behind me? Doesn’t it remind you of that poem by Robert Frost? “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep….” Remember that one?

You know, Christmas is less than a week away! Ho! Ho! Ho!

As my X-mas present to you, I have decided to send out the one essential ingredient for a happy, healthy, and vastly improved 2022. It’s my busy time of the year, so I didn’t have time to go shopping or do any wrapping, but, for this gift, I didn’t need to.

I know you wanted another battery powered hedge trimmer or a super-duper Air Fryer, but you already have too much stuff. This gift, as I said, has the potential of making all our problems disappear. So that would be a good thing. Right??!!!

“What is it, Santa?” I hear you asking. Well, hold on! I’m getting there. Fix yourself a hot cocoa and gather around the blazing Yule logs in your fireplace. Put your feet up.

This year, instead of a bicycle or a moped, I’m giving out a piece of advice! Now, now! Stop that whining! Santa can hear you, and whining makes Santa unhappy. You don’t want to wind up on my naughty list. Besides, it’s a piece of really good advice. I think you’ll like it, and I hope you will put it to good use.

Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to find a place like the snowy forest behind me in my Christmas card. If you have no snowy places in your vicinity, find a nice forest glade or a nature walk. Find a quiet place where you can be alone with your thoughts. Take a shovel.

Sit quietly for a while and think about all the disdain you felt for your fellow men and women this past year. You know what I mean! The guy who cut you off in traffic, and he drove a dilapidated car, and he yelled back at you, but in a foreign language. You felt annoyed and you felt disdain. Remember! Or, you read on your newsfeed about some rich bozo spending money frivolously and apparently not thinking much about giving back some of that loot to the less fortunate. Again, you felt annoyed, and you felt disdain! Or you encountered someone in a public place either wearing or not wearing a mask, depending on your own preferences and you thought less of them because they are not making the same choices you are. Or when in conversation with someone, it dawned on you that he or she will be cancelling out your vote in the next election. You experience disdain. Then you go home and foist your disdain off on the rest of your family. Count up the times you have derisively made fun of someone for your husband or wife or children or grandkids to hear. After all, you need to convince others that your disdain is right and correct and somehow righteous.

Haven’t we all wished a billion time that everyone could be as saintly and smart and discerning as we are? Haven’t we set a record for saying “People are stupid!” this year? Of course we have! We’re only human, but after you have thought about all the times you have felt annoyed and superior, get over yourself, you’re not that special. Then dig a deep hole, shove all your disdain for humanity to the bottom of that hole. Shove your righteous indignation down there, too. Then cover the hole back up with dirt.

Merry Christmas!

Also, clean out your garage and donate mightily to Good Will. You’ll feel a lot better after you do.