Holidays mean more than cranberry sauce and greeting cards

By Carol Mackintosh

I have a confession to make. I haven't mailed out any holiday cards in - golly - close to ten years now. Crummy stuff - like losing a temporary crown on my front tooth while putting on party lipstick - has always seemed to catch up with me in the Thanksgiving/New Year's Eve corridor. I've found that the best way to get through the holidays is to pretty much hide under the bed from Halloween until Martin Luther King's Birthday.

This year feels different, though. Maybe it's my new husband; maybe it's the exhilaration of turning the millennium calendar... I don't know. All I know for sure is I have been scanning the women's magazines for something different in cranberry sauce. And that I've been contemplating some pretty snazzy New Year's Resolutions, befitting the Dawn of a New Age.

The usual banal ones - stop being the last person on the planet who smokes, lose ten pounds that will frankly never be missed on my voluptuous frame - can wait until I'm motivated by more than a calendar page. (No, Mom, that is not your cue!) But the really good pledges that I've been saving up can now fly free.

Despite the annoying presence of certain weepy '70s sitcom stars plastering their sincerity all over late-night TV, there really is something very appealing about this charitable stuff. Several years ago on Thanksgiving Eve, I took my young son along to a veggie preparation party held by a local AIDS organization. I'm not ordinarily very domestic, but helping to make a special celebration for families who could really use the cheer felt really, really good for both of us. I want to do more of this.

Another thing I want to do is be more adventuresome - just a dash of daring, a hint of Èlan. I've become such a mall rat! It's been awhile since I spent an afternoon just ambling through a new section of town, exploring the shops and paying attention to the architecture. It's a good way to feed my soul, you know? So let's get that one written down and regularly scheduled. Check: Afternoons Just For Me.

OK, here's the really big one: it's time to either put up or shut up with that flute which has been gathering dust through ten - count 'em - ten household moves since I graduated from my high school band. I loved playing that thing! I'm taking it in for a tune-up, and then I'm getting out the music books, and by golly, come spring, I could be playing those silver songs again. Wow!

This is exciting enough to contemplate that I may just add some other things to the list, but for now these three will do. The point of my vows is to rediscover my real pleasures, not the forced gaiety that can be shattered by a dropped dental crown.

I think this may be the whole point of the holiday season as well: get out from under the bed, brush off the dust bunnies, and close out the year - and the millennium - with a rediscovery of all the little joys we've forgotten.

And for that, you really don't need a new cranberry sauce recipe.