From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

This holiday season is bizarre, sad and frustrating.  But holiday dynamics are always changing anyway with social/demographic/economic  change. The thing I’ve most noticed is how the composition of holiday gatherings has changed since the heyday of the American nuclear family, back in the ‘50s  -- two parents married to each other living together with a bunch of kids.

Families are smaller,  relatives are more dispersed, fewer people get married, there are now many more open gay relationships and a higher percentage of people at holiday feasts are friends, not family members. Or, I suppose you could say, the definition of “family’’ has changed for many people.

All this has made the holidays  more socially interesting, if more unpredictable. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to seeing, in 2021, if the pandemic permanently changes how we celebrate the holidays, beyond our collective efforts to make Amazon’s Jeff Bezos a trillionaire. I’m guessing that there will be a huge pent-up demand for in-person gatherings. But some may decide that they prefer virtual communication after all.

Something else I’ve noted is while the holidays are still romanticized – after all, they’re an escape -- there’s a  bit more realism around. Consider the reminders at Thanksgiving of how the Native Americans said to have joined in the “First Thanksgiving” feast had been traumatized by the English bringing highly infectious diseases to  the “Indians,’’ who had no immunity.  You never read that when I was a kid. And there are many more warnings  about excessive drinking over the Christmas holidays. It used to be that the drunk at a Christmas party with a lampshade on his head tended to be seen as funny and part of the general jollity of the season; now he’s seen as sad.

We’re going into the darkest time of the year, made darker of course by the pandemic. The brevity of daylight depressed me more a few years ago. But an aspect of aging is that time seems to go by faster and faster. Remember the old line “After a certain age, we seem to be having breakfast every 15 minutes”?  So I’m now more aware that the days will get longer in a few weeks, though we won’t notice it much until late January, and that we’re moving ever closer to spring. The old leaves are off the trees, making room for the new ones.

Tom Finneran, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House, among other big jobs, had some good advice in a GoLocal column as we enter the cold season: Read  catalogs that remind you of happier times to come (if we’re lucky and careful) and escape in your mind to late next spring and summer, when vaccines, we hope, start to liberate  most of us.  Mr. Finneran mentions gardening, beekeeping (a surprise from this tough guy!) and travel.

Think of lines from the ‘30s  song “These Foolish Things”:  “An airline ticket to romantic places. Still my heart has wings…’’ or  lines from “Let’s Fly Away,’’ the ‘50s song made famous by Frank Sinatra: “Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied We'll just glide, starry-eyed….’’

Yes, it’s a good time to day dream.

To read the Finneran column, please hit this link.