This Christmas, unlike the last fifteen, I won’t be reading Stubby Pringle’s Christmas by Jack Schaeffer to my grandkids, all sitting around the living room of the home place.

The pandemic has taken that away from us.

We are still alive, and some have had the virus and are in the recovery phase. But there won’t be any getting together.

This is happening all over ranch country to one degree or another.

So this will be a very different kind of holiday.

Those of us who live on ranches are more or less used to the solitude, so it’s not really a new feeling. And, we do interact, like last night when we delivered homemade bread, hamburger from our fed out steer, and gifts, then waved from the pick up as we left to the chorus of young voices who had come to the front door of my son’s house.

Maybe this holiday season will be one of reflection as we think about how fortunate we’ve been in these past years.

Our parents and grandparents lived through wars, plagues, and depressions.

The bad times may just hollow out a bigger place for the good times to fill with joy when they return.