Caught the Christmas Spirit yet? It's a funny thing, but just when you finally start to get all wrapped up in it, next thing you know the holiday season is over for another year.

When Charlie Brown asks Snoopy how his family reunion at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm went, Snoopy reflects:"The anticipation far exceeded the actual event."

For some of us, Christmas anticipation can be overrated, too. Once you get old enough, the holidays approach like an oversize semi growing larger in your rear view mirror on a downhill mountain road with no runaway truck ramp. The suicide rate might not actually go up during the Christams season, but the anxiety level sure does.

My mother used to insist she was always glad to see the last of Christmas -- a preposterous notion, to my young mind -- and as I grew older I began to realize she really meant it. She said Christmas made her feel like a servant.

Everybody else just wanted to enjoy the season, but my mother felt she somehow had been made personally responsible for making sure that it happened for them.

Cleaning, cooking, decorating, buying the presents, lugging them home, wrapping them, hiding them, putting them out after everyone's gone to bed, and sometimes having to put them together first, then serving the brunch, serving the dinner, and trying to put the house back together when it was over. At least at a job she got paid. And didn't have to get up so early or drag herself to bed so late.

The holiday season is a little like the flu though. It goes around, and what goes around comes around. Folks are liable to catch the bug whether they're in the mood to or not.

Even my mother used to succumb each year. Although she was generally in a pretty sour mood by the time New Year's was over. I think she was the mom Bing Crosby was singing about when he crooned, "And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again."

And as for me? When I started writing this, why I felt pretty much like like a 1, or at most a 2. But now that I've got all this off my chest I'm feeling more like a 5 or 6. So, Merry Christmas, everbody! I'm going to go see whether the kitchen has made any Christmas cookies yet.

And, yes, Christmas cookies.