It's Christmas Eve and there's one more thing to do. Open the windows because it's getting kinda stuffy in here.
Three days into official winter and it's looking anything but. We're getting the temperatures people used to fly to Florida to spend Christmas in. If you want a white Christmas, might be best to visit the cousins in Detroit.
Outside the weather (which technically is best to do inside), the holiday spirit has been elusive for me. Something's missing that I can't quite pinpoint. Lights haven't helped, music hasn't helped. Not even those wonderfully sappy true stories of giving we get this time of year aren't doing the trick.
I've barely participated in seasonal activities outside getting some presents for the kids in my life. I put a scraggly half lit aluminum tree up for my mom. Neither helped my mood, so I've just been stewing. It's probably driving my family crazy.
Short drive, but I'm at the wheel all the same.
So anyway, here we are and it's my job to crank out some verbiage that's appropriate for the season. The crank's a bit rusty this week. Usually, when not in the right headspace for such a mission, reading previous screeds works just like WD-40 on the old crank.
So that's what I tried. Started way way back, years ago and read each Christmas column up to last year. And, just like before, all those words through 2019 were working. I was starting to feel enough to put some words down.
Then I read last year. Last Christmas, the first front line medical workers were getting vaccinated. By May, most adults in the United States would be vaccinated and we would surely be putting the pandemic behind us. In one of the hardest years in anyone's lives, there was hope. A lot of hope.
But here we are exactly one year later. A second and more deadly variant killed more people this late summer and fall than the first year's toll. Today, a third and far more communicable variant has spread across the country and already killed its first American who was unvaccinated. Only 62% of Americans are fully vaccinated.
Today 47% of Kentuckians are not vaccinated. Not because vaccines are hard to get or are too expensive (they're free, but you know that right?). Not because they aren't effective, either.
It's simply because 47% believe something that isn't true. It may be that the vaccine is dangerous, it may be that Covid-19 is potentially no worse than the flu, it may be that it's all a (choose your favorite) conspiracy, or it may be that God is going to save them.
How can there be hope when people believe so many lies.
The missing piece for me this season is hope. It's scarce these days. I believe hope is what Christmas is about, apologies to you Christian literalists out there. It's what I want our brothers and sisters in western Kentucky and all other places under duress to have when they go to sleep at night.
It's Christmas Eve and I need one more thing. Tonight I'll be praying we all get a little more of it by morning. Merry Christmas.