Bill’s Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

At the risk of sounding like a Scrooge or Grinch or some other similar 14-karat stinker, I have to state that Christmas is rather awkwardly timed this year.

As proof, I point out this is the Christmas edition of the Sentinel, hitting the streets with five days to go until the big day.

I suspect a lot of you are so busy getting ready to be jolly that you just don’t have time to be jolly yet.

There is that annual festive panic attack, known as Christmas shopping. Some of you have completed your shopping long before now. Some of you are just getting ready to start about now. Over the years, I have seen life from both sides. Most of you probably occupy some middle ground. In my case, as of this writing (Sunday night), most of my shopping is done, and the tasks that still face me are manageable within the time remaining. So I’m dealing with the temptation to gloat over those of you who are not as advanced as me.

But there are other things that we all have to deal with too.

For some reason, the holidays seemed to have snuck up on me this year. I suspect the municipal elections and their aftermath had something to do with it. I found this year’s campaign somewhat more stressful that others (I don’t know why), thus probably requiring a somewhat longer chilling-out period. Then all of a sudden, BOOM! The holidays are upon us, and my wife stops complaining that I spend more time with the politicians than I do with her, and starts complaining that I spend more time with Santa Claus than I do with her. There’s really not much of a comparison to be made between the two. The fact is, I’ve got a lot more from Santa over the years (no councillor ever brought me a Big Bruiser when I was five years old).

So as the holidays have seemingly come from nowhere, one is put on the spot to answer the demands of the season.

There have been greetings to extend. I have relatives in Ireland who my late mother used to keep informed with newsy, handwritten letters at this time of year. Since her death two years ago, that task has fallen to me, largely by virtue of the fact I’ve met these people because I visited Ireland some years back. My Mom would probably frown at this, but rather than hand-writing them, my letters are typed on a computer. I was a little tardy getting these letters composed and on their way across the big puddle known as the Atlantic Ocean this year, but I’m hopeful they have arrived by now (fingers crossed).

There were the usual batch of Christmas cards to send too. I think they have all been taken care of (my fingers are getting sore from all this crossing).

And then there were the decorations, which Beth and I actually skimped a bit on this year. We’re planning to spend part of the holidays away from home, so we elected not to get a Christmas tree (I didn’t want to leave a potential fire risk like that unattended over a space of days). Pity, because this is only the second year of our marriage that we haven’t had a tree. I still chuckle to myself

when I think of our first tree. We had only been married a couple of months, and Beth had been collecting a series of odd decorations over that time. Since we didn’t have much to put on a tree, and we were taking our first joint venture in the tree market, we decided to start with something small. We walked over to a tree outlet that had been set up in the parking lot in a shopping mall near to where we were living at the time, and I came upon a pitifully small but healthy looking specimen that we figured would answer our needs.

“How much?” I asked the attendant.

“Twenty-five dollars,” he replied.

Then he took the tree from me and shook some snow off it (we had snow that year).

“Fifteen,” he said, handing it back to me.

I think I said “sold,” or words to that effect, not wanting to haggle with a salesman who was already haggling on my behalf.

As I have commented a number of times since then, those were 15 of the best dollars I ever spent.

When it comes to decorating the front of the house, I have come to the conclusion that you have to have a knack for that sort of thing, I just don’t. We made attempts for a couple of

years, which I would optimistically call “satisfactory,” but I don’t think I have the eye required to treat the front of my house as some sort of canvass. Things aren’t helped when I see what some of you folks are able to do with your front yards. Impressive to look at, to be sure. But intimidating to try and emulate.

And there are the social obligations. Some of them have been planned, and some remain to be arranged. I’m sure it will all come together.

I will be getting some time off over the holidays, but that will mean putting one more paper together before the break. The next edition of the Sentinel will be coming out Dec. 27, but it will be going together this coming Friday (Dec. 22). So forgive me for any important events this weekend that don’t make it into next week’s paper. It’s part of the common scheduling problems that tend to crop up this time of year.

So that leaves me with one more holiday task. And that’s to wish the best of the season to you and yours from me and mine.

And let’s all hope for a 2007 that’s filled with health, happiness and prosperity, with just enough local political controversy to keep me usefully occupied, without my hair getting any greyer.