It's the most wonderful time of the year. Who can argue with that? Beautiful displays everywhere, many homes adorned with lovely lights, including some completely covering slippery rooftops. Remember, the Secret Service chief said sloping roofs were too dangerous for trained agents. But not for festive, middle age homeowners.

The Christmas season really begins now the day after Halloween. The stores instantly change from orange pumpkins to Yuletide red and green. In many places, Christmas music is still piped in for shoppers to enjoy. Sure, some of it's what John Lennon once derided as muzak, but there's still plenty of original classics to enjoy, from Darlene Love's dynamic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) to Tom Petty's Christmastime Again to the Ronettes (or better yet, John Prine) crooning I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus to Lennon's own timeless Happy Christmas, the War is Over. Probably the best known Christmas protest song ever written. And in between all the secular favorites, a few real Carols slip through. I still stop and marvel at every rendition of O' Come All Ye Faithful, and the one I love best, Hark the Herald Angels Sing. If they weren't divinely inspired, I don't know what music ever has been.

The man I consider the greatest writer the English language ever produced, Charles Dickens, pretty much invented modern Christmas, during the Victorian age. His Christmas tales, especially A Christmas Carol, perhaps the most perfect story ever written, helped to popularize the notion of trimmed Christmas trees, gift giving, a lavish holiday meal, and the spirit of Christmas, which I think is a real thing. However, even before Dickens was published, in 1823, the poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore, really introduced Santa Claus to the American population. Not to mention stockings hung by the chimney, and sugar plums dancing in the heads of little children. Dickens and England had Father Christmas, but we had jolly old St. Nicholas, aka Santa Claus, who later went on to drink Coca Cola like the rest of us. And his obesity was celebrated by a much leaner population.

Now I don't want the subtitle of this little missive to be misleading. I am not now, nor have I ever been lonely or depressed during the holidays. I had the kind of wonderful Christmases most Baby Boomers enjoyed as a child. My mother, despite being financially strapped, did all she could to satisfy my inevitably lengthy Christmas list. Except for that Ludwig drum set. Which I really need to stop complaining about. And when my wife came into the picture as my girlfriend, she introduced me to a whole new level of holiday celebration. Between her family and mine, we spent many years basically enjoying three Christmases, starting on Christmas Eve and extending to late Christmas night. What would I possibly be depressed about? I was spoiled rotten. And up until the mid-'90s or so, I could accentuate this by watching the endless showings of It's a Wonderful Life that permeated cable television then.