Here’s to matching PJs and the hugs you really mean. (photo by Chris Erskine)

Thanksgiving made me think that “mashed” potatoes are a missed opportunity. Smashed potatoes. Bashed potatoes. All seem more fun and apt and likely to make us happy. 

“Please pass the bashed potatoes” would turn a typical holiday feast into a Seussian celebration. And while we’re at it, why not some green smithereens casserole? 

Point is, rejoice in this crazy holiday season. Sure, it seems like a bluff sometimes, a cruel trick, a test of faith and family finances. So let this be your little pre-holiday pep talk. 

Because, amid the mayhem and the manufactured mirth, there can still be moments: 

• A whiff of that fresh $200 Fraser fir. 

• The warmth of good yarn, bourbon, single-malt scotch, poodles. 

• Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. 

• That relief you feel when you finally plop your fanny into your aisle seat, after a typically nasty trip through a major American airport on your long journey home. 

“Home for the holidays.” Honestly, is there a richer, more-evocative phrase? Home. Holidays. Light the fireplace and put on some Nat King Cole. 

Perhaps our hunger for home is why “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is such a perennial holiday favorite. Tonally, it’s nearly Biblical…two strangers traipsing across a harsh American snowscape in search of missing treasures (family, fellowship, belly laughs). 

“Those aren’t pillows!!!” 

As you’ve noticed, the holidays start earlier every year. Maybe I’m wrong, but my sense is that advertisers and retailers just can’t wait another minute to mark the birth of baby Jesus. 

And how about that radio station that plays nonstop Christmas tunes. Do they now start that at Halloween? Or Labor Day? 

But I find the holidays in small resonant ways as well. The menorah in the window of that cozy little house. The dazzling display fronting Peggy’s beloved gift shop. The little tree in the front window of the Armenian dry cleaners. 

These aren’t religious statements so much as relics of the heart. During the holidays, we’re all sentimental fools. You could scrape me off the floor. 

Of course, we don’t get much snow in So Cal, and when you don’t get snow you grasp for other embellishments. Surfing Santas. Boat parades. The way the morning sun kisses the tops of the trees. Butterscotch on a spoon. Yum. 

Here’s to matching PJs and the hugs you really mean. It’s December. What are you waiting for? 

Here’s to everything. 

Much to be grateful for. The wine aisle at Ralph’s. Empty calories (bashed potatoes, icy beer). Holiday episodes of “Friends.” The airing of grievances at “Festivus.” 

This is a season that sticks to your ribs. Some days I can find God in a stuffed mushroom as much as I can find God in a sky full of stars. 

A poet Mary Oliver said, the soul is “built entirely out of attentiveness.” 

For the record, I now have several personal pastors: Gary, Chuck, Ross. Think of them as a bevy of renowned medical specialists. In fact, the best cardiologist might be anyone – a person of the cloth, an old pal – who actually cares. 

Anyway, one of my pastors (Gary) says God exists in the neutrons, the protons, that heaping plate of spaghetti at the next table, the one you wish you’d ordered. 

In short, God is everywhere. In the layer of Parmesan cheese. In the kids’ swimming-pool eyes. In the twinkle of your great-grandma’s smile. 

As Blake said, “For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.” 

So, now – almost inadvertently – we’ve created these pocket celebrations of the heart, which are more likely to attract God’s grace than some clang-bangy Mariah Carey special, though don’t tell me there isn’t something spiritual there as well, in music that sounds like the drummer’s drunk and the bandstand just collapsed. 

Bravo! 

See, every good feeling is the answer to some little prayer. Every group gathering – the feasts, the sing-alongs, the school plays – speaks to something a little grander than we are all by ourselves. 

So much humanity graces our small and tasteful Christmases. Dickens found it in words. Schulz and Capra captured it in wry, troubled smiles. Target finds it in Aisle 7, near the digital ear muffs and chocolate-covered pretzels. 

Look, I don’t know what you believe. Nor do I really give a flip. I just hope you find something joyful in this busy, bloated, jingle-bell ball – a movie scene that moves you, a song that lifts a wobbly heart. 

Life is short. Christmas is shorter. 

Make it merry, Mary.