Regardless,

the neglected middle child and remind my sister over our Christmas feast that she is nowhere near the cook our mother was.

Or I could get spiritual, sort of. I could hunt down all those people who go on and on about "the reason for the season" and celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus and blah, blah, blah, and point out Christ may have been born in the spring and that Dec. 25 may have been an attempt to absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. Goodness, that's an even bigger lie than the one about Thanksgiving being a celebratory reminder of Pilgrim-native American friendship.

But I think I'll go a different way. I'll remind myself that certainly Christmas movies are unrealistic. They depict life not as it is but as we would like it to be if we behaved better toward each other. That's even sort of the point.

And I will remember that without our families, whatever their faults and circumstances, we would be alone in facing a world that can be indifferent or even hostile.

And I will vow not to let my celebrations - of any holiday, anniversary, birthday or any special day of any kind - be sidetracked by anybody who insists that nothing in the world today measures up to the standards of human perfection all the best people accept.

In short, I will embrace the joy, wherever I find it, even if I only stumble across it by accident.

Quietly and modestly, of course, without calling undue attention to my unorthodox behavior, the way I sit in the back room with the lights off during trick-or-treat.

On, you know, Halloween, when we send our children out to demand candy from strangers in celebration of the pagan festival of Samhain, in which people lit bonfire and wore costumes to ward off ghosts.

Merry Christmas.