Totally Unprepared

Dear Christmas,

Well, you see, it's like this. We only got back from Greece the Thursday before Thanksgiving, and then we had to spend that entire week getting ready to host some of my family.

Then the day after Thanksgiving, we both got sick and that lasted until mid-December, and we were feeling too bad to do anything at all except sit around or lie around and sniffle, cough, wheeze, and sneeze.

And then Erin and Jeff's baby came, suddenly, with only three days' warning, and I've had to spend this past week there, meeting him and visiting all my other grandchildren at long last, whom I hadn't seen since Spring.

And now here it is, only a couple of days to go until Christmas, and I have yet to put up a single decoration (much less a tree), bake a single cookie, write a single card, or finish making the gifts I had started (while sick) for my family.

So what I want to ask is, is there any way Christmas could possibly come a week or so later this year?

* * *

Yes, there IS! Every Orthodox Christian knows in his heart we ought to be on the Old Calendar for liturgical purposes anyway, right? So this year, we are going to observe the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in accordance with the Old Calendar. I believe that puts it at January 7, doesn't it? Ah...