There is only one Christmas that is important – the first one, in a cow shed. Now known the world over, but not always for the right reason. As you celebrate this season, remember the real reason.

Expect a lot of pushbacks as DOGE comes into play. Expect a lot of turmoil. Services will need to be cut; jobs will need to be eliminated. There will be howls all around.

We have become a land of excuses with an ever-smaller portion of the population carrying the load for all. This is going to stop one of three ways.

In my last column, I hopefully regaled you with my story about December 1974. Seven years later, 1981, found me working at the Westvaco Paper Mill at Wickliffe, Ky. Where is this? About two miles south of the merger of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, there is a fictional feud that takes place at about this spot. 

Pulp and paper mills, being continuous operations, sometimes have a shutdown at Christmas to give the operating staff a break. At that point, they tell us engineers, “You can work on the mill while we are gone.”  

In the late 1990s, I was invited to Warsaw, Poland to give a speech on my favorite topic, pulp and paper. Now, this was just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, so matters in countries behind the former Iron Curtain were still a bit wild.  

This may seem like a strange recollection for the dark days of December. However, my favorite astrological day of the year is coming soon – Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year.  It is all brightness and renewal after this, just like the Jonquils that thrive in the elements and are not beat down by the winter. The 21st, followed by the 25th, gives this old soul hope.

Over the years, I have eschewed (love that word) offering best wishes at holidays. Maybe this year is different.  

Graffiti depresses me and sends a signal to me that there are people who have little regard for the looks of our country. Graffiti is not beautiful and adds to the general malaise in our country.

I measure secular quality of life at the bottom of the “food chain,” focusing on highly desired products – tissue – that require just a small income.

The new tyranny is not out in the open, but it affects nearly all of us. It is perpetrated in cubicles, offices and meetings involving people invisible to us. Yet, if you have an email address, it reaches you.  

Honesty is the most valuable coin of the realm. In both giving and receiving communications and actions with others, treat it with respect.

As this election season comes to an end, I want to thank the publisher and especially you, the readers, for encouraging me as I have expressed my opinions.

I believe it was back in the Obama Administration that they started talking about denser housing in the cities. I have done a tiny amount of research on this and discovered that it appears to have started with the concept of the “15-Minute City.”

Right now, there seems to be a bevy of incumbent senators and a vice president wanting to be president lying about their past records in order to persuade you to vote for them.