Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, and Thank Heavens We All Made It

Published: December 15, 2008

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There are many peculiarities to being alive. You spend the first quarter of your life not knowing much when you think you do. If you were honest with yourself in your youth, which is not really possible unless you are an old soul to begin with, you know the world's vastness gives it a complexity beyond anyone's ken. There is only so much one person can do in this world, only so much work you can do in a day. You learn that somewhere in the middle third of your life, or so. And maybe you learn how to use that knowledge in the final third.

Despite all of the crazy reptile and mammal behavior we endure and participate in each year, once a year, thankfully and joyfully, we take a break. A breather. We forgive trespasses, we recall and rejoice, and we mix as family, as friends, as co-workers, as citizens. We celebrate life in the darkest season of year, when food and drink are plentiful after a hard year's labor. After a bountiful harvest. And even if the harvest is not a good one, we celebrate anyway, because that's people. We want to be optimistic, and I love us because of that daring. There is a certain defiance that is necessary to be hopeful--not a careless, dopey kind of hope, but real hope, the kind with sinew and rough edges, that pushes the boundaries of a situation to change those boundaries, if necessary, to solve what seems like a dilemma. It makes me smile when I see this hope, which comes with sleeves rolled up and feet planted firmly on the ground.

Not every country on this little blue planet has the same holidays, of course, but those of us in America are blessed with what I think of the best run of holidays stretching from Halloween through New Year's Day. (There is the battle and drama of college football in there during this time, which is a nice distraction during an economic meltdown, thank heavens.) You could not design a better system than the one that America enjoys, with Halloween and then Thanksgiving, usually bookending year and benchmarking whatever hope we may have had for a year as it comes up against frosty reality. It is here that we have to harvest what we have in the fields, make the best of it, and deal with the worst of what is. There's a reason why stock market crashes happen in the fall, after all. This is when financial hope runs out.

The thing to remember is that annual cycles are ups and downs of our own making. We make the cycle as much as it makes us. And you need also remember that no economy ever goes to zero, even if it sometimes can feel that way. This holiday season comes as America confronts problems that have been stressing our economic system since before I was born. I would like to say that this absolves me of any responsibility--honestly, I am sane enough to not want to own any of this mess--but the citizen-employer in me knows better. I own my very small patch, which you know as IT Jungle, where myself and my compatriots take care of this small parcel of virtual land on the Internet that we have always hoped extends out from there into your life in a positive way. Our aim is and has ever been to be useful, to do our part to help you do your jobs better, and to make this AS/400 ecosystem that we inhabit a better and more vital workplace.

I have been a member of many ecosystems, large and small, in my short time here alive on Earth, and I can tell you this: there is none like the AS/400 community. It's Big Ten Computing, clean and fair and smart and tough. (Where do you think all those Rochester employees come from? Why, the compsci departments of the Big Ten.) And I wake up every day, glad of the happenstance of a want ad for an editor that appeared in the New York Times in June 1989 that lead me down this path. (Well, mostly glad. I would have been happier being independently wealthy and living a life of science and politics. This didn't seem to be an option, and this is not the middle of the 18th century, either.) I am, as they used to say in the 18th century, your most humble and obedient servant.

I am not about to give you a story about sunshine and roses for 2009. I don't think anyone really knows what is happening, so predicting what will happen is impossible, not just difficult. We are going to have to figure it out as we go along, I am afraid. We are going to have to cooperate and share burdens. These are old-fashioned ideas, but they are good ones.

My advice is to work hard for the next week or so, get to the holiday season, and just let it all go for a few days. Turn off the Internet, turn off the TV, turn off the radio, and for once just focus on what is around you. See what you already have, and be thankful. You'll figure out how to keep it if and only if you keep yourself in the proper state of mind. And trust me, I know how hard that can be because I am just as stressed as you are. All of us at IT Jungle are, even though we had a good year with sales growth. How could we not be stressed, despite this? Because we are all in this together, you see.

But now is not the time to worry about that. What we need to do is what people have done for millennia. We need to celebrate with food and drink, and with song and prayer, and with company and solitude. We need to appreciate the people who can laugh and sing with us, who put their backs into making this world with us. As you read this, I have worked late into the night for two days baking a dozen fruitcakes I give away as presents (er, punishment) to family, friends, and co-workers. I have gathered up the ingredients for a Christmas ale and a chocolate bock for the home brew, and I am working with the wife and kids to make a gingerbread house.

All of us at IT Jungle look ahead to the promise of a new year, a rebirth of warmth and growth and potential. But for a while, take the advice for a very wise man, born thousands of years ago, who said to let the morrow worry for itself. Each day does indeed have enough trouble of its own.

So Ho ho ho. . . . See you in 2009.

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