Tag: Christmas carols

Merry and Bright Has Entered the Building

There are two types of professors out there right now: the ones who don’t have Christmas spirit until all the grades are in, and those whose Christmas spirit hopefully gets them through finals week. During finals week we give and grade exams, and it’s a pretty intense time.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

I am one who uses Christmas spirit to get me through the week. Expect me to play Christmas carols in my office, to wear a lighted Christmas bulb necklace, and to be merry and bright (in a muted way, as I’m an introvert).

I have an essay final due on Friday at midnight, and I am going to spend Saturday evening and Sunday grading it and putting my class grades into our automated management system. So it’s a hurry up and wait week for me, and Sunday is going to be brutal. But the house is decked with greens and the carols are on the stereo. I’ll get by.

If the Fates allow

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is still my favorite Christmas song.

The melancholy and longing in that song seems especially poignant this Christmas, when we find ourselves separated by COVID and the measures we must take to keep from getting or spreading it. 

“Through the years we all will be together/if the Fates allow” seems extremely pertinent this year. The Fates did not allow, and we with short memories act as if this has never happened. Anyone with family in the military, in service professions, in estranged families will tell us that this happens all the time. Fate doesn’t allow everyone to get together for Christmas.

I have spent Christmas alone and with strangers, in a private psychiatric treatment center and cooking dinner for the poor. I have spent it with family, and this year I will spend it with my husband and my four cats. 

If the Fates allow.