Finally the train was going so fast it jumped the tracks in a subdivision and the cars went flying into a row of houses and smashed them to rubble like Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat in the Little Golden Book, and there was footage of freight cars sticking up out of the debris like toothpicks in hors d’oeuvres. It was terrible.

And that, dear reader, is how fast Christmas comes once it gets started, as you have just experienced.

When those people in the California subdivision were interviewed, they said they could hear the train coming and they could feel it shaking the ground like an earthquake before it derailed. The sound grew louder and louder, and objects, treasured and otherwise, were shaking down off their walls and shelves. Little did they know that this would soon be the least of their worries, as the train was just about to reduce everything in their neighborhood to rubble.

Christmas comes on faster and faster until Christmas is all there is.

And then Christmas is finally over, and here we stand in that void between December 25 and the New Year, in the utter dark and cold of the winter solstice, perhaps holding a piece of fruitcake in our hand. After all of that holiday buildup, like a bubble bursting, Christmas is just — gone. It seems as if 2024 is over, but no, we have this odd week in which to rest up for the year ahead. It always makes me feel a little disoriented.

Jupiter, my cat, seems to feel much the same way. He is wandering around the efficiency apartment, which appears at this moment to be more of an inefficiency, yowling, apparently at random. I have no idea what his issues are. I chalk up this behavior to his mixed Siamese heritage and his age; Jupiter, like me, is elderly. According to Ancestry.com I am not Taiwanese (formerly called Siamese). Age counts for a lot.

But aren’t the lights pretty? I love walking or driving through town and looking at the way people have decorated their houses and businesses with lights, and this year we have snow, which adds to the effect. We might as well enjoy it.

“Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it brings good cheer,” as the old folks used to say. They also used to say “Bat, bat, come under my hat, I’ll give you a slice of bacon.” You never knew what the old folks were going to say next. My point, though, is that this is a magical time, a time of good will and festivity. In the end, it is not really like a freight train smashing us to smithereens at all! I was just saying that in a sensational way, for the shock value — you know how we media people do.

Have social scientists at a major university ever conducted a study to determine whether people engage in riskier behaviors during the last month of the year than in any other month?

Actually, who needs a study? We know it’s true. Sales figures bear it out. People pack as much bad behavior as they can into what’s left of the old year before they start trying to follow their New Year’s resolutions. I heard somewhere that whatever you are doing on New Year’s Eve — whatever habits or proclivities you are indulging — that is what you will most likely be doing in the year to follow, despite what you may resolve.

For the New Year, 2025, I am hopeful that there will be some changes for the better in this country and in the world. I’m not giddy with optimism or anything, but hopeful.

Even as I make fun of New Year’s resolutions every year, I am secretly working up my own list. There is no sense in putting on a big show. You don’t want people taking note when you backslide. It is very irritating to be reminded of an abandoned resolution by some nosy parker who can’t mind their own business.

My advice is, keep it under your hat. Why give them the satisfaction?

Have a good week!