The holidays in the U.S. seem to go non-stop from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. Maybe even on to the Super Bowl for some of us. Gaining 7 pounds over the holidays seems to be the average American’s average! That means many of us gain more than that, and some lucky (or unlucky) people gain less or none. So, here's something to think about when making your New Year resolution!

Holiday Lament

’Tis the month after Christmas
And all through the house...
Nothing will fit me, not even a blouse.
The cookies I'd nibbled, the eggnog I'd taste
At the holiday parties, has gone to my waist.
When I got on the scales there arose such a number!
When I walked to the store (less a walk than a lumber).
I'd remember the marvelous meals I'd prepared;
The gravies and sauces and beef nicely rare,
The wine and the rum balls, the bread and the cheese
And the way I'd never said, “No thank you, please.”
As I dressed myself in my husband’s old shirt
And prepared once again to do battle with dirt
I said to myself, as only I can...
“You can't spend a winter disguised as a man!”
So-away with the last of the sour cream dip,
Get rid of the fruitcake, every cracker and chip
Every last bit of food that I like must be banished “
Till all the additional ounces have vanished.
I won't have a cookie, not even a lick.
I'll want only to chew on a long celery stick.
I won't have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie,
I'll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.
I'm hungry, I'm lonesome, and life is a bore—
But isn't that what winter is for?
Unable to giggle, no longer a riot.
Happy New Year to all and to all a good diet!

More good news
This year’s traditional “Twelve Days of Christmas,” is costing more than ever this year, according to the PNC Advisors’ Christmas Price Index. The true cost of these 12 days, reflecting the price of repeating gifts in the song, rose to $66,334.46 from $65,264.28 a year ago.

Rising energy costs are driving up the delivery price for a pear tree.

Three French hens cost $45, compared with $15 a year earlier.

The higher cost of hens and geese a-laying may be attributed to fewer hatched birds and the decline in the value of the dollar.

The price of skilled labor, such as dancers, is rising at a faster rate than the less-skilled eight maids-a-milking, the report said. Nine ladies dancing cost $4,400.13, up 4 percent. Eight maids a-milking hired out at $41.20, unchanged from last year. “The abundance of cheaper labor in countries such as India and China has resulted in pressure on U.S. manufacturers to outsource unskilled labor,” said the chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors. “As a result, the cost of skilled dancers has steadily increased, while the unskilled milk maids haven't managed an increase in pay for their services in many years.”

And besides all of this, they say the partridge is also in short supply, hard to find, and very expensive!

Winter’s Shortest Days
In Whidbey Island’s latitude, beginning December 20, the “dark days” begin to shuck off their somber hues second by second, and a dark-weary world peers out like an expectant groundhog, blinking warily against the promise of “days growing longer.” By the middle of January, there will be a noticeable lengthening of the days, the seed catalogues will have a preeminent place on every coffee table, and young men’s fancies will become fancier by the minute, anticipating spring.

With a new year in the offing, there is a reluctant reviewing of mistakes, shortcomings and plans-gone-wrong. The New Year awaits one in the same milieu that 2003 clocked the day-to-day happenings. The only spark is hope... that things will be better, opportunities in abundance, and peace, contentment and prosperity are just around the corner!

Daylight Standard time, which began this year on October 31, brings light to early risers and darkness in the early afternoon. The only positive thing about wintertime is that it brings to the Northwesterner the yearning for “What Is So Rare As a Day In June” and daylight until 10:00pm!

Celebrating the New Year
People all over the world have traditionally taken notice of the beginning of a new year, mostly with the hope that it will be better than its predecessor. How these traditions began is lost in time.

Making good resolutions for the next 12 months is a popular pastime for as long as it takes to forget them. At least good resolutions made on New Year’s Day strengthen the individual’s desire to make it a better world, or at least a better beginning.

In Hungary it is good luck to hug a pig on New Year’s Day, while in Ireland the Irish count placing a kiss on the cheek of the first visitor of the New Year with being good luck to the kisser as well as the kissee. Germans seek out a chimney sweep and shake his hand. The Italians discard the accumulated junk of the past year, believing that the more they throw out the luckier they will be. A great promoter of garage and yard sales! The Japanese scrub their floors and settle all debts. The Scots, however, maintain that even sweeping the floor may darken the days ahead to say nothing of the family fortune, and they do no housework whatsoever on New Year’s Day.

Americans, a diversified race made up of immigrants from all over the world, seal friendships and good fortune by exchanging kisses at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and making countless good resolutions. The paper on which these resolutions are made, recycled, could amount to a tidy saving nationwide, regardless of whether the resolutions are kept. We mean well, but as Dorothy Neil would say, sometimes it is difficult to get our meaning.

Speaking of the weather (which were not, particularly), a local observer once told me: “We have just two seasons on Whidbey Island, winter and fixing up the streets and highway.”

Lee Brainard moved to Whidbey as a Navy wife in 1961 and worked for the local paper. She moved onto the base in 1970 where she spent the next 15 years as editor and reporter for the Navy Crosswind. During that time she started working for Dorothy Neil, editing and publishing nine of Dorothy books and editing Spindrift Magazine. In 1990 she and her husband published the Town Crier, an Oak Harbor community newspaper. She is also an active member of the Oak Harbor Soroptimist club.