Happy Holidays 2025
It is the morning of Christmas Eve, December 24th 2025. I wish I could say that I am relaxing and gazing out at my bird feeder watching the house sparrows make one last attempt at adding to that layer of…
Category Holidays
Happy Holidays 2024
It is Christmas eve 2024, a snowy cold day here in south eastern Pennsylvania. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair with a pipeful of Germain’s Plum Cake Mixture (it is at least 10 years old and tastes like Christmas in…
Happy Holidays 2023
It is the morning of Christmas eve 2023 and I am in my workshop-cum-office enjoying a warm cup of coffee and Haunted bookshop in my Boswell Bing’s Favorite. It is a cool 41 degrees F and the outside world is…
Happy Holidays 2022
Christmas eve 2022. I normally try to write this annual post in the morning when the day is new and bursting with possibility. But today got off to a very slow start (more on that later). I’m enjoying a bowl…
Happy Holidays 2021
It is the morning of Christmas Eve 2021, and I am sitting in my basement-cum-office with a hot cup of black coffee and a bowl of Haunted bookshop in my Savinelli 622. I re-stemmed this pipe, and it is actually…
Happy Holidays 2020
It is the morning of Christmas Eve 2020, and once again there is hot coffee, a pipe, and time for shared reflections. This year I am smoking some vintage (2005) #10 Downing Street in my Briar Spirit bent Dublin (at…
Happy Holidays 2019
It is early in the morning of Christmas Eve 2019, my favorite time of day. The quiet is conducive to thought, and to work. As I set down to work on writing this, my third holiday greetings blog post, I…
Holy Smoke
I realize that not everyone that reads this post will be a Christian, or for that matter a theist. However, don’t think that there are any among us that do not feel something special in the air this time of…