Dear Lord, please protect us from our families this holiday season. As we find ourselves thrust into the company of extended relations, with people who we are related to by marriage—and sometimes less than that, we ask your guidance as the Lucy Van Pelt's of the family start slinging their tidings of nastiness to and fro. And lead us not into confrontation, but deliver us from the people who need favors continuously because others have always taken care of their stuff for them. For families are complicated, and some people don't really want to see us. For that is their nature. Please also protect us from the commercialism and materialism that has all but destroyed a meaningful time. Help us to endure the mess and the stress and the scheduling and rescheduling of gatherings. Help us to smile at things that are dumb and traditions that are overlooked as well as those traditions that are still practiced even though they should forever be buried beneath a thousand million tons of rock. For these are the holidays; the joys and the sorrows, forever and ever; amen.
The thoughts of a writer.
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