GOODBYE TILL NEXT YEAR

I'm going to be traveling to see various and sundry family members over the holidays, so I want to wish you happy holidays, and thank everyone for reading and commenting all year. The folks who spell me when I'm gone will, I think, be showing up again, so please check out what they have to say.

It doesn't seem like a holly-jolly late December, so I'll leave you with a broody British song from my early-'70s adolescence. (Elvis Costello remembers it, too, and has covered it live.) It's not really about Christmas except in the last verse, where the hippie Jesus shows up (and gets persecuted). So farewell, and I'll see you on January 2.