When I was younger and busier, as Christmas became more and more commercial, as retail crushed harder upon us and Christmas became the most important measure of the economy, as downtown begat malls begat catalogues begat the internet, begat the cassette-CD-MP3-blaring soft-core soul whine of so-called music, it became easy to be increasingly annoyed by the hype and nonsense that confused Christmas.
We would strip away the world and became so vulnerable. These times felt rich and real.