December 18, 2025
By Michele Miller
What’s What New Port Richey
Short and sweet and to the point is the thought of the start of this missive. With the winter holidays upon us, we all need to get things done. There’s no time to waste, what with shopping and wrapping and errands to run and life getting in the way of it all in the way it does when you’re “at that age’.
Tossing a wrench in the traditional hustle and bustle is the old man’s shoulder replacement surgery which was scheduled a week before Christmas. Add to that a nasty flare of Carpal Tunnel for me.
Being “of that age,” I’m learning to roll with it some. Evolving, one might say. Into the frailties of an aged body that keeps reminding me of my limitations, despite my brain’s reluctant acceptance that the times they are a-changing, and you just can’t get as much done as you used to.
And why should you?
Christmas is the holiday our family celebrates in a way that has evolved over the years, as it does when the kids grow up and scatter and come to celebrate their own Christmas mornings in their own houses, in their own states. In their own ways.
If our brood celebrates together, it’s on Christmas Eve at our house. Come morning, the old man and I open our stockings stocked mostly with essentials we’ve each written on a list, because what do we really need at our age?
And besides, we’re trying to get rid of stuff.
He makes breakfast, as has been the tradition since the kids were little. Not this year, being that he’s of commission and donning a much-padded and bulky sling for the next six weeks or so.
This year, the youngest is back in the fold for a while. It is both serendipitous for us because we really need someone to help open jars these days, and a much-needed turn for her as she embarks on a new path forward. So she will be helping out with the traditional Eggs Benedict and cutting up her father’s meal, who has lost the use of his dominant arm for a while.
How the tables turn.
The other two in our brood have suggested a couple of new twists on the giving part of the holiday. A $25 – $30 spending limit and /or a homemade gift exchange for the adults, something we are all on board with, given the cost of things, the overall outlook of the economy, job security, the future of healthcare, and how we’re feeling about that.
It’s a fearful yet practical perspective that has us pinching pennies, rethinking our purchases and where we shop (LOCAL!), as well as how we choose to celebrate this holiday that honors the birth of a brown babe born into a poor, transient family simply seeking shelter for the night and finding none save for a backyard stable.
Where might we find ourselves in that first chapter, I wonder? Where do we want to find ourselves in that first chapter?
It’s a gift of thought. Albeit, an afterthought or forethought.
It is the heart of where it starts, lending direction on how to evolve.
Now onward. M.
Happy Holidays.
Read more Onward | Notes From the Editor Columns here.
