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What makes us happy and fulfilled?

According to the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, the answer is very simple: our relationships.

“The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying and overall healthier lives,” according to the book “The Good Life,” which recounts lessons from the Harvard study.

“Relationships in all their forms — friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups — all contribute to a happier, healthier life.”

Most of us know this to be true, yet too often we pursue the shallow and material things that do not make us happy.

On one hand, we want wealth and fame. We want people to recognize us when we walk into a public place.

On the other hand we know wealth and fame are bogus. You never know who your real friends really are. You’re surrounded by people looking for a handout.

I enjoy talking with older people, who are a treasure trove of experience and wisdom.

I still remember the conversation I had 20 years ago with my brother-in-law’s dad, who told me what it was like to grow up during the Great Depression.

He said his family had no money, but he had no idea they were financially poor because they were otherwise wealthy beyond belief.

His city neighborhood was filled with characters, people watching out for them and lots of friends to play with. He said it took forever to walk to the store and back because of all the people stopping him to say hello.

He said he felt sorry for kids today who have material wealth but will never know the warmth of being surrounded by so many people who cared for you.

But we know all this. We know that the happiest moments in our own lives involve friends and family.

These are the people who affect the deeper part of our nature, our spirits and souls, where true happiness resides.

These are the people who help us when we’re down, or engage us in deeply satisfying conversations, or make us laugh so hard our guts hurt.

Perhaps that’s why laughter and a sense of humor are key components of happiness, according to The Atlantic.

“Consuming humor brings joy and relieves suffering,” the magazine reports.

“In a 2010 study from the Journal of Aging Research, the researchers gave one group of senior citizens “humor therapy” — daily jokes, laughter exercises, funny stories and the like — for eight weeks. A control group did not receive this therapy. At the end of the experiment, the people in the first group reported feeling 42 percent happier than they had at the beginning. They were 35 percent happier than the second group, and experienced decreases in pain and loneliness.”

The evidence is clear that engaging and laughing with family and friends are the keys to human happiness and fulfillment.

But sadly, rather than create more connections with other human beings, the U.S. Census reveals that Americans — especially elderly Americans — are increasingly becoming isolated and lonely, reports PBS.

The solution to unhappiness and loneliness is clear to me: Make more friends, engage and visit those who are isolated, and tell more silly jokes like this one:

“Where is happiness made? At the satisfactory.”

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Copyright 2023 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Earmarks are back and they’re costing American taxpayers a bundle.

In case you’ve forgotten, earmarks, says FactCheck.org, “are government funds that are allocated by a legislator for a particular pet project, often without proper review.”

Often attached to the 12 large appropriation bills that Congress by law is supposed to pass each year to fund the federal government for the next year, earmarks tend to be concealed.

That way, members of Congress from both parties can slip in funding for pricy or dubious projects in their districts or states that benefit themselves politically and, for the most part, nobody notices.

People and the media especially don’t notice earmarks when Congress fails to establish a proper budget for each of the 12 separate appropriation bills — something it has managed to do only three times in the last 47 years, most recently in 1997.

What Congress usually does is wait until the last minute and then lazily bundle the 12 funding bills into a single massive “omnibus” spending bill, such as the stinker that was just passed to fund the government in fiscal 2023.

That $1.7 trillion monstrosity is 4,155 pages long and filled with 7,200 earmark projects costing $15 billion that, like the rest of the budget, nobody had time to review and question before hastily voting “aye!”

The spending on earmarks was less than 1% of the cost of the overall omnibus bill.

But the danger is that the earmarks can be used to persuade — bribe? — legislators to support massive bills that do spend ridiculous amounts of money and keep our $31 trillion in government debt ballooning.

An omnibus bill also allows a lame-duck Congress to “pass” legislation it wanted to pass in 2022 but couldn’t — legislation that should be debated and voted upon in the light of day, but was not and never will be.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the omnibus bill included sizable changes to retirement savings rules, cosmetics regulation, Electoral Count Act reform, healthcare and goodness only knows what else.

To be sure, earmarks — euphemistically referred to by our government as “Community Project Funding” — can fund useful or worthwhile projects, such as improvement to medical care, education and other important services.

But they are just as likely to fund things they have no business funding.

According to Reason magazine, the omnibus bill President Biden just signed earmarks $750,000 for fire alarm modernization at the Metropolitan Opera, funds the creation of a Ukrainian Independence Park, whatever that is, and will spend more than $3.6 million to build a Michelle Obama Trail.

Actually, I favor borrowing money to build such a trail, as it well may be our only opportunity to tell our legislators to take a hike!

You’d think Republicans — the party that pretends to be for fiscal responsibility and against wasteful spending — would understand the dangers of earmark bribery. You’d think they would vote to ban them.

In fact, Republicans did just that in 2011. But House Republicans voted to reverse their ban in March of 2021.

And this past November, House Republicans voted by a 158-52 margin against a bill that would have banned earmarks again in the new118th Congress, in which they will hold the majority.

I suppose the best we can hope for, then, is that House Republicans will be only slightly less reckless with earmark bribery than the 117th Congress, which was the most recklessly spending Congress in U.S. history.

But considering that Republicans were rewarded with almost half of the earmark largesse packed into the latest omnibus bill, I have my doubts.

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Copyright 2023 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

It was late December of 2020. COVID cabin fever was hitting me hard.

As a writer and communications consultant, I’ve long worked from an office in my home.

I was used to working alone at home, but COVID isolation was pushing me beyond my limits.

Family issues were also weighing me down. My father, then 87, was facing a series of health challenges.

I was on guard day and night, waiting for a phone call to ask me to help get him off the floor because his legs were no longer able to hold him.

Isolation and stress — and constant worry about getting COVID and passing it on to my parents — were weighing me down.

My oldest sister, Kathy, offered what she thought was the perfect solution to my woes:

“You need to get a dog,” she said matter-of-factly one day.

I’ve always loved dogs and routinely stop to pet any pup who crosses my path. And I still miss my childhood puppy, Jingles, a sweet collie mix.

But I’d never considered bringing a canine companion into my home permanently.

I’m away from the house too often, I told myself. I don’t want to leave a dog isolated in a crate. And I travel for work too often.

But the truth is, I didn’t want the responsibility. I wanted to come and go and do as I pleased.

Luckily, I woke one morning sick and tired of the COVID isolation.

“I’m getting a dog,” I said to myself.

I contacted local rescue shelters, assuming I’d have my pick of dogs that day. But many other people had decided to get rescue dogs during the pandemic, and, after six weeks of trying, no shelter had replied to my applications.

One Saturday, after I’d spent hours calling and emailing various places, I spotted an ad for Labrador puppies that were available in Punxsutawney . I thought it might be a scam, but it was legitimate.

I woke early the next day and made the 90-minute journey to pick out my puppy. Only nine days old, five of the pups had already been claimed. I had my pick of four boys.

The first three wanted nothing to do with me and thrashed about uneasily in my arms. But then I picked up the fourth and he settled contentedly as though he’d found his perfect human.

He did. And I’d found my perfect pup.

Thurber turned 2 on Christmas Day, and throughout my 60 years, he’s one of the very best decisions I ever made in my life.

I didn’t realize how often I’d not been laughing until he came into my home. I still laugh out loud at least five times every day. (See some reasons why at ThurbersTail.com!)

I share this story for the simple reason that one of the best things any human being can ever do to benefit their mental and physical well-being is to get a pet.

The companionship, the exercise, the pure joy of having such a creature share life with you is incredibly beneficial. Several studies show this.

According to PsyPost, a recent study finds that dogs especially improve the health and physical activity of elderly dog parents.

Pets make us more empathetic and more civil toward each other.

And they certainly help us escape from the never-ending noise and stress of modern life and bring us a peace and calm that we badly need.

So as we wrap 2022 and head into 2023, here’s one resolution that you should strongly consider: Get a pet!

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

I’m filled with a renewed sense of hope all of the sudden.

Truthfully, I don’t know why I feel such hopefulness.

Last Friday I went to the hospital to have a hernia surgically repaired. They stuffed a hose down my mouth and pumped me with air, then sliced and sewed and got my torn parts back in order.

My throat is still throbbing. My torso feels like someone drove a locomotive into it. I slept much of the dark, cold weekend, recovering.

And yet I just woke from a Monday afternoon nap filled with a sense of wellbeing and hope.

Don’t misunderstand me. There’s plenty of despair in our world.

In our personal worlds we mourn, as we head into the holidays, the loss of our loved ones. My family has had its share of such pain this year.

It doesn’t matter who you are, loss and suffering are a part of life, and both are felt at their keenest this time of year.

We also worry about our politics and the anger, division and nastiness among so many people. We are being torn apart and we know that a nation divided cannot long stand.

Our culture is running amuck. So many of our young people are depressed and disoriented and not even sure what they are or want to be.

So many of our kids are being harmed by the decisions they make now — when the true blessing of a young life is to flourish and grow and become what God intends you to be.

I will soon experience my 60th Christmas on Earth and my childhood was immersed in so much more clarity and simplicity.

We didn’t have an abundance of material things, but we had a lot of laughter and joy and, thanks to the nuns at St. Germaine Catholic School, tremendous clarity.

The good nuns taught us that there is order in our conflicted universe — that there is good and bad, and that they’re at battle everywhere, every day, in every heart.

They taught us we have the free will to choose our direction, good or ill.

We were taught to pray to align ourselves with good and order and to root out dishonesty and nastiness from our beings.

The virtues were pounded into our developing minds and we had better learn to embrace and master them: prudence, temperance, courage and justice.

We were taught that as we strive for good, we must fend off bad behavior: excessive pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth.

These are known as the seven deadly sins — activities I like to save for the weekend!
It is very simple, really. You are either moving toward the light and goodness or away from it. It’s the eternal struggle of humankind.

But sadly, our modern world is moving away from light and goodness in so many ways.

We are straying from the most simple, basic truths of human nature — as we embrace and encourage as truth the kind of wrongheadedness that can only lead to failure and human despair.

It’s easy to get down in these noisy, confusing times.

But still, I am filled with hope that we can right our course.

It’ll take prayer, charity, love — and hope.

That is what I am focusing on as we celebrate the Christmas season. I am praying for those I love, my neighbors, my country, my world.

I don’t know what impact I will make, but hope is all I have. And I’ll give it everything I’ve got.

Merry Christmas to you and your families.

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

I read a great piece in the Tribune-Review about the nostalgia many Pittsburghers hold for their favorite old suburban shopping malls — especially around the holidays.

Malls around the country are in trouble these days. Experts say their Golden Age ended years ago and Pittsburgh proves it.

Century III Mall, which was a hub of activity when it opened in the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh in 1979, has been shuttered since 2019.

In the city’s eastern suburbs, Monroeville Mall has many empty retail storefronts.

South Hills Village is the mall my friends and I frequented during our high school years in the ‘70s.

A year ago I wrote about my experiences and my affection for “The Village,” which in our era of constant disruption is holding strong as far as malls go.

Disruption is said to be a healthy thing for a vibrant economy — though the decline of malls proves it is not often pleasant.

Just as the migration from city neighborhoods to the suburbs disrupted and ultimately killed most big department stores in downtown centers, online shopping has disrupted and, in some cases, has killed suburban malls.

Regrettably, there is another reason fewer people are frequenting malls: fear of violence.

According to the American Psychological Association, more than a third of Americans fear going to crowded public places, such as malls, because they fear mass shootings.

Social media sensationalizes relatively rare acts of violence and makes us more fearful in our daily lives than we should be.

But Psychology Today reports that “active shooter” incidents in public spaces have in fact increased considerably since 2017.

Google “mall and shooting” and several stories will pop up.

Most are not mass shootings, but the ugly truth is that in the back of many people’s minds when they head to the mall they are worried about someone planning violence.

The Tribune-Review article shares examples of the tremendous nostalgia people have for the malls where they spent their formative years — a nostalgia that I share.

I’ve never been a big shopper, but the mall was always a cheerful and eventful place to visit, especially during the holiday season.

I remember one year in the 9th grade when I saved enough money to buy my mom and dad a lava lamp at Spencer Gifts, the store specializing in nutty and funny items.

My dad did his best to thank me when he opened that gift on Christmas morning, but it was clear he was thinking, “What the hell am I going to do with a lava lamp!”

The truth is, though today I live only five or six miles away from South Hills Village, I don’t often visit it. The last time was to buy a new black suit for my dad’s funeral.

I have no plans to visit the Village during the Christmas season, either, and I have no idea how busy the place is now.

But I do fondly remember the energy and excitement of visiting it in my “mall-rat” years.

The hustle and bustle of Christmas was always alive there. We never knew what to expect — or what friend we might bump into along the crowded walkways.

Those fun, carefree days of shopping at the mall are a thing of the past now — for me and many others.

But if someone were to visit Spencer Gifts to buy me a lava lamp for Christmas, I’d be forever in that person’s debt!

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Thurber, my yellow Labrador, has been a part of my life since Feb. 20, 2021.

I still have trouble putting into words how much he has enriched my world.

But thankfully some of our most beautiful minds have shared thoughts that can help others understand the beauty of the canine soul.

I found these quotes featured at AKC.com:

“Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles Schultz (cartoonist, “Peanuts”)

“A dog is the only thing on Earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” – Josh Billings (American humorist)

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” – Will Rogers

Well, Charles, my warm puppy is now a healthy 24-month old pup who still warms my heart.

Josh, I dare say I love my dog more than I love myself.

And Will, I couldn’t agree with you more.

I fully believe I will see all of my loved ones again when I leave here — and that includes my childhood puppy, Jingles, and Thurber, my “angel without wings,” who makes me laugh out loud five times a day.

Here are more dog quotes from Goodreads.com:

“If you don’t own a dog, at least one, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.” – Roger A. Caras (wildlife photographer)

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.” – Milan Kundera (novelist)

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive.” – Gilda Radner

Roger, I wish I hadn’t waited so long to get Thurber, now that I know how much more joyful life can be.

Milan, I enjoy several moments of Eden daily now.

Gilda, you were a wonderful role model for being alive — the dogs you loved surely taught you well!

Here are some more quotes I found via Google:

“I’m suspicious of people who don’t like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn’t like a person.” –Bill Murray

“I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.” – Doris Day

“It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” – Kate DiCamillo (children’s fiction author)

Bill, I couldn’t agree with you more. I will never understand people who do not like dogs.

Doris, a lifelong dog lover, knows a lot about our canine family member. I was very sick for a week with the flu last April (not Covid) and lay on the bed like a lump. Thurber comforted me, never leaving my side.

Kate, I’m blessed to have a dog with an incredible sense of humor, and fall in love with him immediately I did!

Thurber is the first pup I’ve had since we got my childhood family dog, Jingles, when I was 10. I was 58 when I brought Thurber home.

He was a lot of work those first few months, but he made me laugh so hard and feel such love and affection so deeply, I cannot now imagine my life without him.

I’m a new dog dad trying to learn and understand how I can love and care for him in the best way possible.

The training is going OK — he’s training me as fast as he can!

He’s teaching me to be more patient, silly, cheerful, more curious about the world — and humble.

The great humorist Will Rogers explained better than anyone how our dogs teach us humility:

“If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around!”

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is creator of ThurbersTail.com, which shares helpful pet-care tips and funny stories and videos featuring Tom’s beloved Labrador, Thurber. Email Tom at [email protected].

My dog Thurber has been lying to me.

It only figures, because it’s impossible to avoid mistruths these days.

We just exited a miserable election cycle in which truth stretching, name calling and vote pandering were all in high gear — and inescapable.

Our politicians in both major parties really know how to lie.

They know most Americans disdain complexity and want to hear promises that resonate — even false ones.

They know we voters want contradictory things like more free government goodies — but less government spending. And that we want fatter Social Security checks — but lower payroll taxes.

The politicians always promise they’ll make these impossibilities happen if we vote for them.

We know they’re lying to us — and we’ve learned to count on it. But politicians aren’t the only ones fibbing out there.

Our cable news personalities pretend to be after the truth.

But in fact they spin whatever yarns are likely to generate the most ratings — and to heck with the anger and division their “reporting” causes.

From our country’s beginning we’ve had our share of liars, snake-oil salesmen and flimflam artists.

These scoundrels weren’t judged on the rightness or wrongness of their scams so much as the skill with which they pulled them off.

The sorry truth is that Americans want to be lied to.

We’re suckers for a skillfully told yarn that puts us at ease and helps us sleep better at night.

But my dog, Thurber, is spinning yarns, too?

Part of the reason I love my puppy so much, I had thought, was because he was a refuge from the adult world of mistruth.

But then I stumbled upon an Animal Cognition study that found that dogs, too, are capable of lying to get what they want.

In the study, researchers trained 27 dogs to differentiate between a “cooperative” woman who allowed them to have their favorite treat and a “competitive” woman, who did not.

Dogs were taught how to lead the two women to three boxes: one contained sausages, their favorite treat, the second contained dog biscuits, and the third was empty.

When dogs were asked to “show me the food” they would lead their partner to one of the three boxes.

The cooperative woman rewarded dogs with whatever was inside the box, but the competitive woman kept the treats if the dogs picked a box with treats inside.

So what did the clever canines do? They almost always led the cooperative partner to the treats and the competitive partner away from them.

In other words, dogs can be as cunning and deceitful as the rest of us, which is beginning to explain a lot about Thurber.

Let me give you an example.

When he looks me dead in the eye and gives a soft whimper, he’s telling me he needs to go Number 1.

The same look accompanied by a soft moan means he needs to go Number 2.

But sometimes he pretends he has to “go” 1 or 2, just so I will let him outside to play.

What else is he lying to me about, I wonder?

Where he hid my glasses? The TV remote? My checkbook?

Somebody cashed a check for $1,000 recently and the signature looked an awful lot like Thurber’s paw print.

My point? Mistruths are running rampant these days.

Even our dogs are lying to us.

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: This column is based on an earlier, shorter version that was distributed by Cagle in February 2021.

Coffee. I needed coffee. And sleep. And food.

That’s the experience I had for weeks after I picked up my 8-week-old Lab puppy, Thurber, in February, 2021.

Before I got him, I was cocksure I’d mastered the proper training techniques to bend my little guy’s will to mine.

“No dog of mine is going Number One in my house,” I boasted to anyone who would listen.

“No dog of mine is going to lack discipline,” I protested.

“No dog of mine will sit on my furniture!” I said, arrogantly.

How did things work out?

I had my carpet cleaning company on speed dial — my cleaning service, too!

Discipline is overrated, after all, as it intrudes on fun.

And it wasn’t long before my furry bundle of joy was sitting on my beloved leather recliner, staring at me with black, doughy eyes that transformed me into a pat of butter in a frying skillet.

The truth is the training strategy still isn’t going well — though he’s teaching me as fast as he can.

My dog is a bundle of joy

His endless cuteness, hilarity and affection as a puppy melted my heart and made me laugh out loud all day long. Now almost two-years-old, his antics still make me laugh out loud daily!

He never stops reminding me that the world is a place of constant wonder — and that there’s a lot to experience if you keep your eyes — and nostrils! — as wide open as his.

When he first experienced snow, he couldn’t dance in enough of it.

He still plays with a chunk of frozen dirt with more intensity than he does a store-bought toy.

I fell so hard and fast for my little guy, he changed me quickly in ways I didn’t anticipate.

That first week he was home, I was so focused on his health and happiness I barely slept or ate or did anything for myself.

Dogs are good for civility

The first month I had him, I spent so much time caring for him, playing with him and laughing — and so little time on the internet and social media — I barely knew what was going on in the world.

But being offline had an unexpected blessing. I wasted no time engaging in fruitless debates with strangers about politics.

And because I basically stopped watching cable news, I was spared the divisive news and opinions that never stop coming out of Washington, D.C.

For the sake of America, I wish everyone would invite a puppy into his or her home. Reason magazine helps explain why.

Pets are an antidote to anger

According to Reason, politics is seeping into every aspect of our daily lives and ruining everything.

“Americans are choosing jobs, brands and friends for partisan reasons,” the libertarian magazine reports.

This is because Americans are becoming way too serious — way too lost in the narrowness of their limited, subjective, partisan points of view.

“Agree with my opinion on all cultural and political matters, or I won’t be your friend,” think many.

“I’ll report you to the HR department for offending my sensitivity,” think others.

“I will boycott your product or service unless you think like I do!” more people are thinking.

That’s because, tragically, we live an era of opinion trumping fact.

To everyone’s detriment, including our own, we try to impose our will and our political values on others and we shun those who refuse to submit.

Let’s learn from our puppies!

But we have it all backwards. An open heart and open eyes are what we need.

Laughter and affection, not stridency and anger, are what will bring us together and help us realize we are not so divided, after all.

Canine friendliness is what we need most!

Here’s something this new dog dad has been lucky to learn:

People who invite a curious, loving, playful canine into their homes will be so inspired by their pup’s wonderful view of the world, they won’t be able to stop themselves from becoming more civil and charitable with their fellow human beings.

Especially if their fellow human beings are canine lovers, too!

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is creator of ThurbersTail.com, which shares helpful pet-care tips and funny stories and videos featuring Tom’s beloved Labrador, Thurber. Email Tom at [email protected].

I’m not feeling it this year. I’m just not feeling the Christmas spirit of any kind, and I know, for the benefit of others, I need to get out of my slump.

Christmas cheer is a real thing.

A variety of studies have found that we actually do become more cheerful — at least most of us do — during the most giving time of the year.

Insider cites a study in Denmark in which brain scans were conducted of people looking at images of colorful Christmas decorations.

“The front of the brain lit up for those who celebrated Christmas as the holiday images flashed before their eyes, showing that there is a ‘holiday spirit network’ in the brain,” reports Insider.

I certainly have long had a strong holiday spirit network inside my brain thanks to my mother.

She worked hard to make Christmas as fun and enriching as it could be.

She was a master at building up suspense about the surprises that awaited us Christmas morning.

And even during some of our most challenging years as a family, when Thanksgiving concluded, her Christmas switch went on and she loved nothing more than decorating the house, holiday records playing as she whistled beautifully to the music.

My mother was always at her happiest during the Christmas season and her joy was infectious.

We took her good cheer for granted as children. But I know now that she loved Christmas so much because it gave her an opportunity to articulate and cultivate her love for her family.

That’s why the happy memories of my childhood Christmases hold such incredible power over me now — and why I know I must overcome my lack of Christmas spirit this year.

I know it’s my duty to be more cheerful toward others, so that my little bit of good cheer may spread and grow — because I was blessed with such an abundance of it for so long.

Cheerfulness, just like rudeness and incivility, is infectious, which is probably why Christmas cheer motivates us to give more to charities than we normally do.

During the Christmas season last year, despite a rocky economic year, Americans donated a record amount of money.

Donations are expected to be down slightly this year due to high inflation rates and other financial challenges, but the Christmas spirit continues to fuel our incredible generosity.

With my father’s recent death, it’s been a particularly rough year for my family. All of us are struggling to embrace the spirit of Christmas — including my mother.

I know from experience that the only way out of a slump in Christmas cheer is to simply give.

That includes doing something, anything, positive and upbeat to help others who are facing their own physical, financial and spiritual struggles.

There is no shortage of people who need some extra Christmas cheer this year.

Many of our troops are away from their families — or dealing with debilitating injuries — and we can support them.

Our neighbors may be out of work or struggling to make ends meet in our difficult economy and we can support them, too.

Elderly neighbors may be isolated and lonely inside — they will cherish some company and regular check-ins to make sure they are doing OK.

I pray that I do better at spreading the spirit of Christmas — and that all of us make good use of the wonderful and very real gift of Christmas cheer.

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Vinyl records are making a comeback, and it’s not just nostalgic old fogies who are driving the trend.

According to Readers Digest UK, millennial and Gen Z consumers are digging the distinct sound of vinyl — and especially digging its imperfections and limitations.

The scratch and crackle of a needle dancing atop a record’s grooves is a sound you don’t get with digital music.

The typical LP — “long-playing album” for you digital music people — plays only 22 minutes or so per side, which requires the listener to get up and change records a lot.

Required participation offers the listener a more intimate and engaged listening experience.

The wonderful ritual of pulling an album from a shelf where your collection sits, carefully removing the record from its sleeve, setting it on the turntable and then gingerly setting the needle down… this ancient ritual is just magic.

Appreciating the lost art of album cover designs is another important part of the listening experience — which is why Rolling Stone published a readers poll of the most loved covers of all time.

I’ve had a love affair with vinyl since I was a boy in the ‘70s, the heyday of vinyl LPs.

It was also the heyday of clunky, wooden stereo consoles like the one that sat in my parent’s dining room for 30 years or more.

The old oak console contained large speakers concealed by green fabric. It featured a record player and AM/FM radio.

Sundays after supper, the sweet smell of coffee and pot roast and pineapple upside-down cake still in the air, my father loved to play his favorite albums on it.

He liked Barbara Streisand in those days. He also loved Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. And he’d go nuts when he played “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa.

He’d crank the volume up and begin marching through our small house, lifting his legs and arms high and making exaggerated faces the way comedian Red Skelton did with his Clem Kadiddlehopper character. We’d jump from the table and follow behind him, marching and laughing until tears filled our eyes.

That old console played nonstop during the Christmas season.

Our stack of records usually began with the “Holiday Sing-Along with Mitch Miller,” followed by the “Christmas with the Chipmunks,” then “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” then Bing Crosby. As soon as Bing finished “White Christmas,” we restacked the albums and spun them again.

My mother used the stereo more than anyone. She loved to listen to it while working around the house.

Sometimes she tuned into an AM station that played Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Other times she’d play her Doris Day album. I still can hear her whistling — in perfect harmony — along to “Que Sera, Sera.”

That younger generations are embracing vinyl is an encouraging trend.

Younger people have grown up in a world in which they have immediate access to whatever they want: streaming video or music, goods delivered the same day by Amazon and endless noise and chatter on social media.

Yet by returning to vinyl they are choosing to slow their lives down, relax and more fully experience the wonders of music, which — with the exception of a John Phillips Sousa march at full blast — is a fine way to calm one’s soul.

Goodness knows that our cranky, overstimulated world could use more of that.

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].