light in times of darkness

As the days have considerably shortened over the past months, one can't shake a gloomy feeling overtaking while walking from one shadow to another. Streets filled with people running from one crowded bus station to another packed giftshop. Holiday greetings passed from one stranger to another with the same enthusiasm as one would hand out coupons filled with the promise of free coffee to go along your double burger... Yet in times like this one can also find a peculiar kind of comfort, not just in the snow spread thin on the roofs and certainly not in the chimes and tunes comig from one too many a christmas-themed shop, but in the absence of loved ones that are not amongst us (anymore). For it seems that those we miss make us enjoy the ones who are around us all the more, and this, I find, is what makes christmas worth all the running around. But that's just me of course...