“I hate Christmas,” my husband said.
“Me, too,” I replied.

We are not alone. Lots and lots of people feel quite gloomy every December. Not children, of course, and probably not the parents of small children who are passing on the tradition of Christmas to those youngsters so one day they will transmit it to theirs and so on. Spending their treasure on the kids with the usual profligacy, continuing to blend nostalgia into debt.

Big news. Duh. Even we blonds know Christmas is for children. This is a good thing. We are showing how much we love children or at least, like them, or some of them. But—what if you don’t have any children around to carry on your personal, traditional, HoHoJollyChristmas role? What if there's.. no one.

Then you are in reality outside of Christmas. Of course you feel blue. Or suicidal. Outside of Christmas means you will not go shopping for fuzzy toys or buzzing motors, you will not imagine the cuddles and the shining faces around the glittering tree. No, like the Scrooge of the dreaded Christmas Past, you will suffer the long December nights, watching the phone not ring. Shuffling through the mail, grateful for a card from the car dealer, the insurance agent and a hopeful Realtor.

Not that you send any cards. Oh, you think, why bother? They don’t care. Sure, I’m a grandpa but I’m too far away. Outside the family.

Maybe you’re not even a grandpa. You’re an aunt, a perfectly healthy 60-year-old aunt with a generous heart, lonesome for your nieces and nephews. Somebody else’s kid to snuggle. But no, they are all busy ripping the paper off a thousand gifts and the ones your sent are at the bottom of the pile. You will have to call later to ask them if they like what you sent and they won't remember which was yours.

While the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings Silent Night you will spend a lonely Christmas Day in a tree-less living room. You will swig a too-sweet eggnog, then go-ahead and sweeten that glass with another slosh of scotch, all the better to enjoy your misery, your no-stocking fireplace with not even a good old dog to keep you company. You have a roaring case of the Christmas Blues.

Here’s the remedy: number one: get over it. Understand that your happy childhood Christmases were wonderful because somebody else made them that way. Those folks are gone now.

But other parts of your life were pretty damn good, too. Think of really great sex in the back seat of some boy's car. Think of that trip to Paris when you snuck off with your boyfriend, leaving the children with your clueless husband. Start planning a really good vacation for yourself.

Number Two, Nostalgia increases wrinkles. Stuff the Blues into a scrapbook you open every December first. Have a good cry but as you reach for the Kleenex, find a morsel of humor in your slobbering. Is it not ridiculous for a grown-up to pine for the stocking she once hung by a long-dead fire? Was it really that great?

Three: Stuff someone else’s stocking this year. Yeah, I know you always do. My mother always told me to bet big on the Now. So, whatever you gave last year, an old frozen turkey (a pox upon you!) or a check for $10.000, double it.