CAN A GROUCH EXPERIENCE A "MERRY" CHRISTMAS AND A "HAPPY" NEW YEAR? This posting is too late to be timely, but just the same -- Happy New Year to all of my readers and followers on this weblog. And also I do hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas. ( Have no fear -- I have not grown soft.  I am the same perennial grouch you've come to know and (hopefully) love.  But do keep reading.) This set the old gg to thinking -- and we know where that often leads-- but seriously,  how many times would you estimate you wished another person a Merry Christmas and/or Happy New Year this holiday season?  More importantly,  how many of those utterances would you say were genuine and sincere as opposed to being a mere rote expression, sort of like saying " Hello -- how are you"? Now that we've completed that task, I would like you to ponder this :  Just what does it mean to have a "merry" Christmas?  And what pray tell is a "happy" new year.  Now I'm well aware of the cynics among us who will say  that the words " merry" and "happy" have no place in the vocabulary of a grouch.  Well, let me tell them this:  The gg resides smack dab in the epicenter of the grouch universe, but even I can conjure up notions of what a "merry" Christmas and a "happy" new year might look like even in this less than idyllic world we inhabit. And I think you, my readers, can as well.  So here's what I ask you to do next: Think about your Christmas just concluded.  If it made you "merry" then jot down on paper what it was that made it "merry'.  It's okay to admit being "merry" even if only for a short time.  Your reputation as a grouch will remain intact.  I have your back.  Now,if your Christmas was not "merry" in even the teeniest, tiniest of ways, jot down the reason and state what it would have taken for you to have had a "merry" Christmas.  Now do the same for New Year:  If your new year has been "happy" or you still expect it to be so, write down why and how.  On the other hand, if it hasn't been "happy" thusfar and you don't expect it to be "happy," write down what it would take for you to truly have a "happy" new year. Make sure your thoughts are yours and yours alone.  Don't look at your neighbor's notes. You're almost finished; the hardest work is done.  The final and most important step I'd like you to take is to enter theinformation from your notes in the form of a reply or "comments" at the spotindicated at the end of this posting.  That way, if everyone cooperates, all ofour readers can share their notions of what is "merry" and what is "happy" witheach other, all the while retaining their status as sure-fired grouches.  Whatcould be better than that?  What do you have to lose?  I promise you will findthis exercise therapeutic and we might find out something about our individualselves we did not know before.  Some of you might even make this old gg smile. Now there's a trick. gg