Humbugger – The Good Old Fly Suits Me Fine

Am I a humbugger? If you know me, you know the answer. If you want a hint, try spending a couple of years and a few more Christmas seasons selling shoes, in a mall … retail.

That’s a far cry from one Christmas day, about 20 years ago, spent surfing Oceanside, California. Sure it was cold, so cold I could feel the skin and muscle tightening around my skull. Was it worth it? Oh yes.

Is it a generational thing that I never heard a whisper, or saw a mental struggle from my Grandpa, or nowadays my father-in-law, over what to get for whom? About the only thing Grandpa had to figure out was where to stuff another new cellophane wrapped shirt in the bottom drawer stuffed full of cellophaned shirts.

For some reason, all I feel this time of year is pressure – my head spinning like the top of a pressure cooker. It took years to get half of our wedded union to finally get on board with drawing names, while the other half … well, during the good times that was a non-starter, and since the downward death spiral (economic and otherwise), gifts are pretty much off the table during the long silence. And that suits many fine. Heck if it weren’t for the downward spiral of the photography economy, who knows, perhaps I would have cut off the “humbugger fly” and put a more attractive fly on my line, now or in the recent past.

Regardless of your gifting habits, I know you will enjoy a brief musical respite brought to you by none other than Liam Delaney. For new readers, and there are hundreds now, I roll Liam’s Christmas Song out about this time every year, and requests were coming in ahead of this post actually requesting it.

Liam sings “All I Want For Christmas.”