I want to write something for this Christmas that will make everything better. A fiction, a feel-good story, a joke, even… But I realize that there is nothing I can do or say to make anything better, not for the majority of people, anyway. My message would never reach them. Even if they were able to access it, find it through the mass of Internet mis/information, it wouldn’t penetrate their hardened hearts and wispy souls on the verge of being sucked out by the incoming tide.

Even for my small circle, making things better is little more than a pipe dream. I tried to spread some joy at the beginning of the month but was then stifled by time and lack of financial resources.

Still, with much of my heart, because I recognize my own darkness, my own inability to overcome my human failings, and my own very real wishes for the people who make life harder for the rest of us (and it isn’t the homeless guy on the street, the undocumented, or the poor), I want to make life easier for all of us. I’ve specifically avoided writing things that were dystopian in nature. I’ve tried to keep things positive, and I’ve tried to dwell on my mixed blessings. When a seemingly good thing ends up being a sucker punch, it can be difficult maintaining the sense that the good win and we all get our just desserts, especially when viewing those who make the news.

So here I am, at the end of the Christmas holiday, a day I love for its secular glory and its myths of kindness, Santa, and the redemption of the truly deplorable Scrooge. And I’m writing my Christmas wish to you, for you, and for the everyone else. I hope that the holiday has been more about those around you than it has been about you. I hope that the ghost, past present and future, have nurtured their lessons in your heart, and I hope, beyond all common sense, that the next year will be extravagantly successful, beautifully joyous, and so full of prosperity that your over-flowing cup will allow you to share your good fortune and happiness without thought to the consequences of your own position.

In short, I wish you more than the best that you can conceive. I wish you the best life here on Earth that any being can conceive. With love and dread parceled out to keep life spicy, merry Christmas and happy new year.