Spirit Of The Season

January, 1986

One of the special punishments of working for a monthly magazine is that you have to suffer the holiday season not once but twice a year, and since the deadlines fall 90 days ahead of the cover dates, you have to start thinking about Christmas and New Year's at the end of September, when you ought to be enjoying the witless stupor that takes three months to earn in the hot, short rays of the summer sun.I suppose it would be all right if you liked the ritual greed-and-guilt frenzy that ends one y...