Merry … Humbug. That’s been pretty much the feeling around the Cooper household over the last few weeks.

Christmas with the Coopers of late has seemed more like Christmas with the Cranks. It’s not that we’re not collectively trying to be in the Christmas spirit or anything; it’s just been one of those years when lots of small, nibbling little things build up and grate on our yuletide nerve.

My wife Julie has been sick with some kind of crud for nearly a month. Furious fits of seemingly endless coughing have driven her to the brink of holiday abandonment.

The Christmas cough has led to sleep deprivation — the kind of which can only be made more maddening by a cheerful 2-year-old who sees nothing wrong except everyone in the world is incessantly throwing images in her face of that guy up north in the furry red suit.

Daughter Anna is not yet a fan of Santa. She will barely tolerate his image in her presence at the moment.

The so-called terrible twos — the infamous period of tantrums and testing that young toddlers often enjoy — seemed to arrive around the same time as the cough.

Yours truly was relatively unscathed until approximately two weeks ago. Some unnoticed, but clearly mechanically improper lifting caused me to pull or strain a muscle in my lower back.

The result was largely unnoticed by most outsiders who saw me unless they happened to see me get up from a seated position or walking for a few moments after I’d risen. My appearance was more hunchback-like than I’d have liked, particularly depressing during a time of holiday cheer.

The various illnesses caused some delays in our traditional holiday preparation — most noticeably was the non-existent Christmas tree in our den. You cannot have Christmas without a Christmas tree, but neither the cougher nor the hunchback felt much like tree shopping until late last week.

With the cough controlled at least a bit and the back muscle nearly returned to its original condition, we set out to hurriedly purchase a tree. Late-season Christmas trees are rarely the best, but we quickly purchased one and dragged home.

Just when we thought our Christmas cheer was back on track, Scrooge bit back.

While yours truly was rolling around on the concrete driveway trying to level the newly acquired tree into a tree stand, an injury occurred.

Once upon a time, in a much younger life, injuries required violent actions — collisions with my older brother, accidental encounters with sharp objects, etc.

Today, as a sign of just how old I am, I am hobbled by what I believe to be a cracked rib. I was taken out while lying on a flat surface. The end is surely near.

My optimism that a “normal” Christmas could be saved — something of which I’d been convincing the worried wife between coughs — was quickly waning.

That optimism all but died Thursday night as Julie expressed a rather obvious epiphany.

“This is why all the Christmas movies are filled with bad things?” she said. “Everybody’s Christmases get this way.”

A bit of truth exists in her words. Pretty much every Christmas film has some bit of torture for the characters — my favorite being the Bumpuses’ dog stealing the turkey in “A Christmas Story.”

But just like Ralphie’s family in the movie, we didn’t take long to realize Christmas isn’t so bad, even through coughs and sharp pains.

No matter how bad we may think we have it, no matter how stressed we might be over the holidays, we have one another, and that’s a pretty special feeling.

An even better feeling is felt through the awareness that we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmastime. Without God’s gift of his Son, none of our joys in life would be possible.

Life would instead be filled with nothing but coughing spells, sharp pains and much worse.

Most of us are blessed beyond belief, even on our worst days.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.