Editor’s Note: Hope Mongers

Or does it? I’ve been accused of seeing the world through rose-colored, sequin-encrusted glasses connected to a purple feather lanyard, and even I know that the holiday push is strictly profit-fueled. But maybe we’re so quick to embrace it because what we actually are embracing — whether we know it or not — is the sense of hope, happiness, peace, love and joy that the holidays manage to bring, no matter how hectic, how commercial or how insane they get. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself, mainly so I can avoid strangling some premature and unsuspecting holiday well-wisher with a candy cane and a length of garland.