Sailing into uncharted seas inevitably leads to both wonders and perils, some of them predictable and others completely unforeseen; anyone who can’t accept that needs to stay at home on the shore. – “Uncharted Seas”
While November is heavy on holidays, December is absolutely dominated by them; in 2012 the columns on holiday topics made up more than a third of the columns that weren’t news or links (and almost a third with those included). They included “The Trafficking of Santa“, “End Violence, Not Demand“, “Visions of Sugarplums” (the fictional interlude), “The Winter Solstice“, “Christmas Eve 2012“, “The First Christmas“, “The Feast of Stephen“, “My Favorite Christmas Things” and “New Year’s Eve 2012“. This was the last month before I switched to answering reader questions weekly rather than monthly, and this month’s roster shows the reason for the change; beside the regular Q & A column I also published “Sugar, Sugar” and “Still More Mentoring“, and both “IF” and “Just Friends” could have been done that way if I wanted them to be, since both topics (my blog’s indexing and whether men and women could really be friends) have been asked of me often enough. Once the “news and commentary” columns (“Buried Truth“, “Accredited Whores” and “On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake” are accounted for, all that’s left are four philosophy columns: “Conflation Creates Criminality” (on the conflation of pejoratives); “Like a Horse and Carriage” and “Uncharted Seas” (on the implications of same-sex marriage); and “Any Old Port” (on the fallacy at the heard of “addiction” rhetoric).