This is the sixth Christmas column I have written and I must confess I do not have much for you. Here it is Christmas afternoon and I sit here hoping for some sort of inspiration. My family gets together on Christmas Eve. We eat a big meal, open gifts and attend church. This year we were happy to share Violet’s gift of some fiddle songs for the congregation. She has been taking fiddle lessons only for a few months and is happy with this new form of music. She has been learning the Suzuki method through the public school system since kindergarten.

In his essay, Movable Feast, Henry Beetle Hough writes: “People talk of the good old days on the Vineyard — the nineties, when croquet and bicycles were fun . . . Someone was young then, and for him who was young it was the golden age.” Mr. Hough, the late editor of the Gazette, is speaking of the 1890s, and though the 1990s were a time when I was young and bike riding was fun, croquet has never been fun no matter how hard I try to give it a chance.

What is happening? Back in the 1970s there was a rainy Christmas day with temperatures in the mid-50s. It was so unusual that we recorded it on a tape recorder. Rain pounding with sounds of little children. Now Christmas has what I call Halloween weather.

I loathe and despise leaf blowers. Who came up with such an invention? They are ear-shatteringly large, ecologically unsound and remarkably stupid. Now that I’ve told you what I really think . . . it seems every time we are working quietly on a job site the “mow and blow” crew shows up. I understand they can be handy to get leaves out of tricky places but, honestly, a rake and a broom can manage the job. I’ve watched workers blow tiny pieces of grass from dirt driveways, for Pete’s sake.

I realized something after it was decided I would write about parsnips this week. I began my usual writing process which includes going to the library and taking out three books that have nothing to do with my subject. Lately they have been books about New England spanning the time from when the New World explorers began to land here, around 1600, to books critiquing private schools written in 1910. I had forgotten how many times people failed to settle here before they succeeded.

I love a typographical error in the columns. Oftentimes it gives me some ideas for the following week. Last Friday’s paper misread my hometown of Rew, Penn. as Rue. It is easy to misread my handwriting. That’s right! I still put pen to paper, and my editor is kind enough to enter it into the computer on my behalf.