Some thoughts prompted by the Christmas holiday, bless my heart.

First, in the interest of full disclosure, you might as well know there are a lot of perks to being a weekly newspaper editor in 2021.

For one thing, we pull in seven-figure salaries and have our own private planes and boats and limos to haul our important, freshly-laundered selfs to and fro, and fro and to again if we want.

We could probably spend all day getting hauled to and fro and fro and to if we wanted to, just because we’re weekly newspaper editors and people like driving us around to see the expressions on our erudite looking faces.

I don’t spend my days getting chauffeured about, obviously, because I’m humble.

A man of the people. In fact, despite my fancy lunches and pampered posterior, I remain very much down to earth. If this particular weekly newspaper editor you’re reading was a Sneetch, he wouldn’t have a star on his belly, I can assure you.

Not that it is always easy to hang with the home boys, what with my bonus incentive golden parachute package worth upward of the gross national product of, say, my home state of South Carolina.

And at times it is hard to avoid all the messy hobnobbing and goober-smooching one must do when one is important, and when one has the personal cell phone numbers of mayors and county commissioners and sheriffs and other big shots like Wendy Futch and Alex Floyd on my speed dial, even though it might not be called speed dial anymore.

I forget where I was going with this, but basically it was probably to say this: I’m a weekly newspaper editor and after 20 years of marriage and half a decade before that of fooling around, it’s high time my wonderful wife, who likes to boss me around and is still trying to house train me, realizes I am a thinker, not a doer.

I am a noble ape – as the comedian Jim Gaffigan calls himself – and therefore not always all that good at chores like blowing leaves or putting one’s dirty socks in the hamper, or putting anything back where I found it.

Some last minute stocking stuffers for the world: For developers who keep building all over the place: May your eternity be spent stuck with a full bladder in all the traffic you’ve brought to this area.

For those who move down here and then decide we’re not doing things right like building roads fast enough, a reminder that the biggest reason we’re so behind the 8-ball is looking back at them in the mirror. And then a copy of Lewis Grizzard’s immortal column with the rejoinder that “Delta is ready when you are.”

At least I think that is a rejoinder. It is good, whatever it is. But then, that was Lewis Grizzard. He had a gift.

For all those experts on social media trying to run the world and do everybody’s job for them: If you can do a job better than the person you’re criticizing, by all means step up to the plate. And, a reminder of the old adage, “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.” And the caravan ain’t on Facebook, folks. But there are plenty of yappy dogs there. Sniff.

To those who see race in everything and who blame racism or racists or another race for all their troubles: A month spent being the race they blame for their woes. Empathy and a mile trot in another man’s shoes might be enlightening.

By the way, I recently read or saw something somewhere noting there’s only one human race. We have different amounts of pigmentation in our skin, but we’re all the same race. We just come in different wrappings. It makes sense.

Sure, some of us big shots are weekly newspaper editors, and thereby higher up the food chain than, say, hedge fund managers and congressmen and fashionistas and school superintendents, but we’re all people.

Finally, an admission. Regarding that seven figure salary – there’s a decimal point in there, and some change, and a comma.

But it keeps the lights on and some beer in the fridge and my wife’s battery powered leaf blower charged up for when I’m not there to crank up the big one.

Hope you have a great Christmas and please keep the first responders – the cops, firefighters, EMS personnel and others who work to make our lives safer and more secure – in your thoughts this holiday season. And Go Gamecocks.