Is it me?  Or do the holidays this year lack a certain frisson?  People seem glum.  OK, there’s the nice person at the Parking Department who smiles when handing out permits; the clerk at the liquor store wishing everyone, “Merry Christmas”; the supervisor at the welfare office giving a colleague a gift; and, well-wishers who are Shinto, Buddhist, and Hindu sending me emails from India and Japan saying, “Merry Christmas!”

But is there something missing?

Could the guns, the anger, the attacks, the disparities be making many people feel, I don’t know, left out?

No way of knowing.

I did receive a lively CD from a co-worker in the welfare office in Roxbury of Christmas tunes sung by an array of folks, from James Brown and on up.  That was nice.

And soon I’ll be off to buy oysters, sardines, and sole.  That was to be for a truncated 7 Fishes dinner tonight, but then a Rohan duck arrived on Tuesday so it’ll be fowl tonight and fish on Boxing Day.

Something is clearly afoot or a-fin.