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The New Years Eve party that Mary had so lovingly planned for the Canadian visitors did not take place due to the water pipes that had frozen and burst, causing a flood in the basement and no water in the house.   As Mary packed away the funny hats and noisemakers, she thought, "What in the world is life about, anyway, it is just useless to try to do anything, why do I bother?"

The new year started like the old one ended, this time with an emergency run to the hospital with little Beth, who couldn’t quite get over that flu bug, which had turned into pneumonia.   The members of the church helped out by bringing in meals, but many ladies noticed the disarray in Mary’s normally immaculate home.   Two weeks later, they allowed Beth to come home with a breathing machine, many medications and strict instructions about how to care for her now damaged lungs.   During all this, Mary had begun losing weight, and her and George waited until the kids were   in bed before they started their nightly arguing, which always escalated into terrible fights, sometimes physical.

By the end of January and her birthday, Mary did not even look like herself.   She had lost 25 pounds, quit dying her hair, the family had stopped attending church completely and Mary wore the same pair of sweat pants as she moped through the house.

George had applied for work everywhere he could, to no avail.   Al came back home, with new music in his bag, a weird haircut and some really scary friends. Sophie stayed in her room all the time, silent as a mouse and little Beth looked like a little ghost, frail and thin and white. Bibles remained on shelves and good Christian music was replaced with the worldly kind, blaring from the radio almost continuously.

February was supposed to be the month for lovers, but this was the month George chose to leave Beth, the kids and his home, not able to take it anymore.   No one heard from him for many weeks, Mary struggled every day, just to get the kids ready for school, then fell back in to bed until their return, rising only to make sure Beth had not hurt herself and feeding her occasionally.

On February 14^th, Beth watched TV while lying in bed, as was her usual routine and saw some beautiful couple holding hands, enjoying a romantic dinner by candlelight.   Something inside her snapped.   She glanced over and under the nightstand was a broken Christmas ornament, lying beside her dust covered Bible.   She could bear it no more.

The older children found their mother’s body in the bathroom after school that day.   After the usual procession of authorities through the house, a neighbor was heard to say, "I wonder what happened there? She was such a good mother, and they seemed so religious."

The above of course is a fictitious account of a life lost in the shuffle of the holidays, however, I would like to present a theory about why there are so many suicides, marital problems, runaways, drop-outs and many other relationship and personal problems directly after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

We have just passed a "religious" holiday where most of the Judeo-Christian world honors the birth of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.   People have focused their minds on "Christian" things for a while and then Satan comes along, the jealous monster that he is, and steals all that away with financial problems, relationship difficulties and just plain doom and gloom.

There is such an emotional build up for the last 3-4 months of the year, things get to almost a   fever pitch.   We are trained, YEA, brainwashed basically from infancy with all this hype for ONE DAY, then, we are left with an emotional vacuum, almost like the stillness of space, in the coldest, darkest, slowest months of the year.

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