On Monday this week I awoke — I won’t say like Ebenezer Scrooge — to the awareness that the year was rushing to an end. Two and a half weeks till a new year. . . . And so I hurriedly began getting ready for it.

    The calendar imposes its will. I found myself trying to tie up every possible loose end, from the old white tablecloths and dinner napkins still to be put away after Thanksgiving, to the piles of papers on my desks at home and in the office, to the annual bills to be paid, to (not to mention) the gifts to be purchased and, in some cases, wrapped and carried to the post office before next week. Maybe if I let the more dreary chores go I will have time to get to the cheery ones.

    Last weekend was the climax of what is for me a busy Choral Society season, culminating in an annual brunch and holiday concert. The Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church was packed, as usual, and I can attest to the joy of those of us who took part as performers. This year we played host to three instrumentalists, two French horn players and a violinist, here to augment the South Fork Chamber Orchestra, and the pleasure they take in music infused and elevated our conversations.

    Now I am excited about going first to Nova Scotia to spend Christmas with my daughter and her family, then to hop down to Boston to herald the new year with my husband’s son and his. I am sorry that I will miss the company of my East Hampton and New York City grandchildren at Christmas, but I am lucky to be able to see two of them in dance and theater performances this weekend — one taking the role of Clara in a version of “The Nutracker” and another the fairy godmother in “Cinderella” — and to know we are all headed toward 2014 in good health.

    On Jan. 14, it will be 34 years since Ev Rattray, the father of my children, died, having written that he would leave life with few regrets, one being not living long enough to know grandchildren. Every year I think of our last New Year’s Eve together, when I made him a martini and we tried to celebrate. “It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things,” Dickens wrote, “that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

    It wasn’t an easy season for me then, and it hasn’t been easy since, but I’ve discovered something about Christmas. I have until recently been among the rare number of singers I know who really do not enjoy carols. I would tell anyone who might happen to ask that this was because I grew up thinking that Christmas was for someone else, not for me.

    Now, though, I’ve come around. Seeking “peace on earth and good will toward men,” which the carols do, is surely a universal sentiment, and I am looking forward to going caroling on the quiet streets of a small Nova Scotia fishing town on Christmas Eve. “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future,” Dickens had his Scrooge say. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

    Most local after-school activities were canceled Tuesday as a light snowfall drifted through the air over the South Fork. Traffic on Main Street quieted down; the usual rumble of work trucks was thinner. The snow wasn’t sticking. The temperature was slightly too warm, but that did not stop the preparations.

    From my window, looking out toward the Town Pond green, I could see the occasional snowplow roll past, all geared up with nothing to do.

    Late-fall snows like these are difficult to predict, especially out here. Those who make decisions about school closings and the like have only the forecasts to go on, and the National Weather Service had posted notice that as much as four inches could accumulate by sundown on Tuesday. But as classes were being dismissed that afternoon, there was only a white dusting in patches and nothing on the roads.

    Television news from UpIsland thrummed out its ominous drumbeat nonetheless. Storms are part of regional TV’s bread and butter, and the newscasters’ excited patter adds to the sense of drama. Truth is, most snows here do not amount to much. We’ll get a couple of inches, or even a foot or more, but soon the temperature warms, and it all melts away. Very rarely do we see a many-day accumulation. Would-be cross-country skiers find no hard crusted base under a new blanket of white on which to glide.

    Gray days like Tuesday wrap us in the season’s dour coat anyway, the dim light leaving us less energetic than usual. The phone does not ring. Conversation in the office just dies away. A little more snow would brighten things up. Instead, we have cold, wet ground and the hiss of tires on the wet pavement.

    It is the middle ground of a December afternoon, not day or night, neither fall nor winter.

    I would have been standing on line for an eternity in Chelsea today to experience 45 seconds of it in Yayoi Kusama’s “Mirrored Room,” but forgot, in my anticipated bliss, to get someone to look after our aging Lab, Henry.

    So, it’s Henry and me and paradise will have to wait. Actually, as I said to the Mary who sells best sellers down by the seashore, I am already in Paradise, having climbed up through the nine circles of the Inferno and up the seven terraces of the island mountain of Purgatory, “that second kingdom / in which the human soul is cleansed of sin,” in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

    To my Mary, when she asked the other day what I’d learned, I said there were at the summit of Purgatory two streams, the Lethe and Eunoe, its twin, the first for forgetting sad memories, the second for remembering only the good. “You have to be immersed in both,” I said, “and from the second you return ‘remade . . . prepared to climb unto the stars.’ ”

    And with that, I was off with Henry to climb — however slowly in each of our cases — unto my office at The Star.

    Another thing I’d learned in the “Purgatorio” I later told her was that it was Dante’s friend Nino Visconti who said, “How brief a blaze a woman’s love will yield / if not relit by frequent touch and sight.”

    I’ve had that 1985 desk calendar quote from Mother’s Day of that year pinned to my bulletin board ever since, and every now and then it serves as a goad when I remember to what extent, at times, I’ve fallen short.

    Forgetting to get someone to watch Henry today so that we could take a bus into the city was one of those times.

    Only embers were in the fireplace when I, reduced to uncharacteristic silence by my failure, my sin of omission, shuffled down the hall to the guest room to read, before going to sleep, the first canto of “Paradiso.”

    A pretty good approximation of it greeted me the next morning when Mary, ready for work, tapped me awake and said, reassuringly, “It isn’t the end of the world.”

    Every professional writer who makes his or her career gathering other people’s stories should be on the opposite end of that equation at some point. Sure, we write about ourselves and our experiences from time to time, but it is very different when someone else decides to take on your story, whatever it may be.

    So last month, when Edible East End asked my husband if he would consider inviting a writer and photographer into our house to talk with him about his work and join us while we cooked a meal, I was equal parts excited and nervous. For nearly 20 years I’ve been making that same sort of phone call myself, contacting people I barely know and essentially asking for an invitation into their lives.

    Our first response to the query was: Us? They must be desperate. Then we decided it could be fun. Then I back­pedaled, wondering how we could ever make our house and ourselves presentable enough for pictures. In the end, we agreed, because . . . why not? Whatever it was, it would be set against a backdrop of food.

    The question then was what to cook. My husband has his specialties, and they’re very good, but I’m the one who does most of the cooking, trying recipes I’ve seen in magazines, reinventing dishes I’ve tasted at restaurants, and borrowing ideas from friends who are far better cooks than I. There’s a lot of experimentation, some overworked flops, and a few shining stars.

    Sometimes when I’m anxious, I cook. I made granola and tomatillo salsa. I roasted chilies, made hot sauce and hot pepper jelly and carrot-top pesto, and baked muffins with the kids (from a box), all the while wondering what I would cook for the Edible people when they came for dinner.

    At the same time, I was tracking down a story of my own, a food piece for The Star’s holiday section on Christmas specialties in Latin America. With a list of local home cooks from some of the 21 countries of Central and South America plus Mexico, I started making calls and sending e-mails and researching customs, traditions, and the food that went with them. For someone who likes to cook and enjoys trying new food, it was the best kind of story.

    The lines between the story I was writing and the story I would be in began to blur. We’re always told as journalists not to be part of the story, but in this case, the story was becoming a part of me.

    Sharing food, after all, is about sharing something of yourself. When you share a recipe or cook with someone, when they let you taste their food or invite you in for dinner, they are, in the most basic sense, inviting you in. It’s an honor and a treat.

    At a birthday party last spring for one of my daughter’s friends, I got to talking with her very young grandmother, who is from Mexico and probably only a smidgen older than I am, about the food she’d put out for the adults — a fabulous spread that I still rave about at the slightest prompting. She brought me into her kitchen, showed me the combination of chilies she used, and told me the basic ingredients.

    When this holiday story came up, she was the first person I thought of. This woman can cook! The morning after contacting her, I was at her dining room table talking food and tradition, begging again for the recipe for that dish from the birthday party. Tamales, I noticed, had gotten mention in almost everyone’s rundown of typical Christmas fare, whether they were from Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, or Mexico. Where, I asked, could you get truly great tamales on the South Fork?

    “We go to Queens,” she said. As luck would have it, she was headed there that afternoon and could get me some from the woman she said had the very best tamales in the borough. Along with that offer came an invitation to her birthday party that Saturday night.

    The next morning at 6:30, I had a text: “Can you come before 9? I have tamales for you, and corn drink.” Could I ever! After sending my daughter off on the bus and dropping my son at day care, I was back in her kitchen, now filled with the intoxicating scent of cinnamon and just-warmed tamales.

    A pot of horchata — a rice drink with cinnamon, a touch of sugar, and other spices — simmered on the stove and there were red and green chicken tamales, sweet ones with raisins, others with molé or hot chilies. She packed a Tupperware full of them for me, then filled a pitcher with horchata to share with my co-workers and again invited me to her party. At this point nothing could have kept me away.

    It was an easy sell to the rest of the family, so we dressed up and headed out into the unknown on Saturday. My two kids were quickly swept up in a game of hide-and-seek with the other children, while my husband and I chatted with each other and a few of the other guests, all friends or part of our hostess’s extended family. We relaxed a little more when the food came out — much of it from our favorite Montauk takeout spot, El Vaquero.

    And then from the kitchen, the sound of a guitar. Just a single chord at first, followed by the beginnings of a song. Not just one musician, but a full mariachi band dressed in all black, its singer in full white, stepped around the corner into the dining room, filling the cozy house with music. The birthday girl beckoned for me to come sit next to her at the table. Out came the shot glasses. Around went the bottles of tequila and soon half the house was singing along.

    This was her story, but that night, it was my story, too, and it all started with a recipe, as so many good stories do.

    As for that other story, the one that took place in my own kitchen, I can safely say that the music wasn’t nearly as good. We had cheeses from Mecox Bay Dairy, my own pepper jelly, local scallops from the Lesters, greens and squash from Quail Hill Farm, roasted Quail Hill carrots with carrot-top pesto I almost forgot to serve, a North Fork wine. If the food didn’t measure up, I blame the chef, not the ingredients.

    Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.

      Our family doesn’t like to throw anything away. This is a problem, given that I and one of my sons have inherited houses that were full of things to begin with, and given that my daughter used to haunt yard sales and the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s Bargain Box looking for interesting household implements and china and doodads.

       I often say “it came with the house” when someone notices and admires something around here. I’m really very lucky: Furniture of local origin was inherited, as well as many nice old books — but also a huge store of kitchenware, things like sieves and 19th-century pie plates and prehistoric popcorn poppers that probably could electrocute a person.

       A typical example of the kinds of things you can find in our kitchen is the dark, tarnished-looking prewar potato masher with a wood handle. Some newer members of the family think it looks dubious (if not potentially detrimental to health). But, according to those who take charge of the mashed potatoes this time of year, it works much better than the modern one that’s in the drawer alongside it. Or the pair of old can openers that the Vermont Country Store now replicates; or the five or six huge glass pickle jars with green lids, which Martha Stewart copied.

       There’s nothing like having 16 for Thanksgiving dinner to force someone to take stock of the kitchen and pantry shelves. My daughter was pleased when, after not too long a search, I laid hands on the only slightly rusted, heavy inherited meat grinder, in which she ritually crushes orange, candied ginger, and a chunk of nutmeg for fresh Thanksgiving cranberry relish.

       I was especially relieved to unearth the meat grinder because, before that, she had sent up a weep and wail about the disappearance of a favorite tin Mouli cheese grinder from the 1940s (originally used by her grandmother), and been loudly chagrined not to be able to find any of the several Pyrex pie dishes that used to live on one of the top shelves.

       I protested that I was quite sure no one intentionally threw out these things . . . but then I turned around and pointed the finger of blame at my husband over a missing turkey baster. Between you and me, I’m quite sure my husband did throw out the good baster. Of course, I only discovered this crime when the 24-pound turkey was already in the oven and all I could come up with were various bulbs and tube parts that didn’t fit together properly.

       Who keeps a large variety of turkey basters on hand, and vintage ones, at that? We do. My daughter, come to think of it, gave me a present some years ago of a really old one still in its cardboard box. Where could that one be? I haven’t noticed it in the drawer recently, even though it’s a real museum piece. (It came from the same era as the old milk bottles that I collected for a while, which stand in a line on the sill of the pantry window.)

       The reductio ad absurdum, however, is a supermarket graham cracker piecrust on a top pantry shelf, where it has been sitting in plain sight for perhaps seven or eight years. Exactly why I didn’t throw it out when I recently rid the shelves of things like long-outdated baking soda and desiccated spices is a matter that might be of interest to a psychoanalyst, I’d say. The piecrust in question has a foil shell and is covered tightly with plastic, so I haven’t bothered to take it off the shelf and investigate whether it’s actually still good.

       I blame all this on family tradition. We have a deep, deep-grained habit of — and appreciation for — preservation of, well, everything that might disappear. Words, names, land, furniture, traditions, footpaths. Even rather useless household detritus that, apparently, helps connect us to our roots. That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

       When I was younger, my standing joke at this time of the year was that all I wanted for Christmas was socks. It was true then, and it is true now; socks are just fine, at least for me. For our three kids, however, gift-receiving is another matter altogether.

       And children’s presents are made complicated these days by the ubiquity of smartphones. While the younger ones may want those shiny and bright geegaws seen in the Sunday paper circulars, the truth is they will cast them down quickly to lose themselves in a tiny screen if given the chance.

       So it is with pleasure that I observe that our 3-year-old still likes his Play-Doh, plastic dinosaurs, and toy cars, and he will entertain himself in the yard by waving a stick at imaginary foes. The thing is, of course, those unseen enemies may well turn out to be characters he has seen in cartoons.

       The oldest of our children, who is 12, has been fully seduced by all things online. She spends as much time as she can with her smartphone, often playing an in-app game while streaming TV shows or YouTube in a tiny window in one corner of her screen. Presents for her have been whittled down to the basics: A gift card for clothes is about the only other tangible thing she is interested in.

       The sister in the middle enjoys crafts. This week she quickly used up all the supplies in a marker-making kit she received for Hanukkah. Yet, even with her, such physical diversions can quickly give way to digital distractions.

       As for their mom, who doesn’t wear jewelry and prefers to pick out her own clothing, presenting her with the time she covets would really be a challenge. She likes to read, but buying her a novel for her Kindle is hardly a romantic gesture.

       For me, it’s easy. Socks. For the rest of the family, not so much.

       We tried, but, as usual, failed to escape Thanksgiving.

       “Let’s go to Sam’s,” I said to Mary when the subject came up, “and have a large pizza with cranberry topping.”

       It’s not that we are antisocial — we do care for our relatives, but when they’re foregathered all at once it can be overwhelming, especially if you are — as Mary often is — the designated cook. (I, being the designated joyful one, have an equally arduous task.)

       She was let off the hook somewhat this Thanksgiving, having only to make three shepherd pies and turkey soup for 14 for the day after.

       Somewhere she heard that roasted turkey might turn out better if cut up a bit. The butcher advised against it — with reason as it turned out, for the various parts ended up unevenly cooked, some hardly at all. Which got her to worrying so about salmonella that she was ready to chuck everything and start anew with a whole new one.

       “See, I told you I didn’t think I’d be very good company this Thanksgiving,” she imagined herself saying to her siblings as reports of salmonella poisoning began to come in.

       “Salmonella Mary. . . . It has a nice ring to it,” I said. “And you alone will be left to inherit your mother’s estate.”

       Gavin, our son-in-law, a chef, among other things, who, even though he was still in mourning for the Broncos’ recent last-minute loss to the Patriots, rallied to reassure her that everything would be all right.

       “See,” I said to Mary this morning. “I ate a turkey sandwich last night, and I’m still . . . aaargh, aaargh, gasp, gasp, oh, Jesus, oh my God! Still . . . still. . . .”

       I quickly got up from the floor because I didn’t want to overdo it. “Still here!”

       “Okay, you can taste the soup now,” she said a while later. “And tell me if it needs salt.”

       I dipped the spoon in — gingerly, eyeing her carefully, inasmuch as I was reluctant to take leave of my that it was very savory as it was. As was she.

       “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said brightly.

       I, of course, was happy in the knowledge that she still likes having me around. . . . At least I think she does . . . for most of the time . . . for much of the time, anyway . . . in small cathartic doses then; let’s leave it at that.

     There are Hamptoners who only use their houses here one week a year. I know this because two years ago I worked as a sous chef for such a family. Headed by one of the biggest Wall Street whales, they only inhabit their Water Mill House during Thanksgiving week, the rest of the year being spent in the city, Florida, England, France, and probably more places to which I’m not privy.

       With its team of gardeners planting all sorts of autumnal foliage around the vast bay-touched property, its cozy fireplace-lit rooms, and its barn with indoor squash court and bowling alley, the compound is an idyllic spot in which to celebrate bounty. They have much to be thankful for.

       I received a call a few days before Thanksgiving from the estate manager. I had known her when she was the private chef of now-divorced friends, a Wall Street pasha and his wife who had a house on the ocean near the Maidstone Club. She knew that I cheffed on occasion. Could I start Monday? There were three days of prep work before the extended family of roughly 30 would gather on Thursday.

       I had never been a sous chef. I had worked the line at a restaurant once, had been a cook at two top Los Angeles caterers, had a couple of catering companies of my own, and had been a “private chef” for several clients from L.A. to Connecticut.

       I would be working under the clients’ French chef, who followed them to their various residences.

       “How’s your knife work?” she asked. Not great, was the truth. Knife work? This had never been important to me. Then again, I never worked for clients who cared if a carrot was properly julienned or a leaf chiffonaded. It’s not that I don’t know how to properly slice and dice, it’s just — like penmanship — I’d never mastered it. I’m a very fast cook, preferring to rely on the various blades of the food processor. But that, I knew, would not please a classically trained French chef. 

       I consider myself a creative chef. My formal training is limited. In my 20s my neighbor in the city, Peter Kump, founder of the James Beard House, inveigled me to attend the first class of his cooking school. Today it is the widely respected Institute of Culinary Education. I already knew what I was doing, having fooled around in the kitchen since I was 15. My first meal: Chicken Kiev from “The New York Times Cookbook.” Yes, the melted butter spurted. I was hooked.

       I loved Peter’s school, learned a lot, but found I preferred my usual method of immersing myself in cookbooks (always piled high on my nightstand), then using recipes as veering off points from which to experiment with my own versions. Like covering songs. A few years later, while living in London, I took a few classes at the Cordon Bleu, but found its methods dated. In one of the classes a dour woman demonstrated how to prepare a marrow squash, basically a large tasteless zucchini. I reverted to the books of Elizabeth David and Madhur Jaffrey, going through a stage where I cooked only Indian food, seduced by the exotic aroma of toasting spices. 

       As I was buzzed through the security gate, I was anxious about what the chef would think of my skills. Never mind my years of cooking untold dinner parties for friends, not to mention cooking three meals a day for myself. (For today’s lunch, just a regular weekday meal, I stuffed a poussin with dried fruits and threw some vegetables into the roasting pan. It took me the same time as making a sandwich, not including cooking time.) The first day went well. We mostly made menus and lists of ingredients, which we gave to another kitchen helper whose only job was to shop.

       That night the estate manager suggested we go out for dinner, an opportunity to bond. She chose Bobby Van’s. Since we were on Long Island, I suggested fluke. When the chef took a bite I could see it was not up to his standards. Then I tried it. Strangely cardboardish. I sent mine back. He didn’t, but he didn’t eat his either. I later found out this had scored against me. But I’d be damned if I’d pay $35 for an inedible fish.

       The next day the prep work began. Two housekeepers and the Water Mill and New York butlers bustled about on the perimeter. The chef eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t find much to complain about. I kept my eye on three kitchen maids who grabbed my chopping block to clean whenever I wasn’t looking. We endlessly peeled and chopped and, as there was not enough room in the three kitchen refrigerators, it was my job to find space in the pool house refrigerators, and its outside closet that stored cushions, but was cold enough to keep vegetables safely. For the next few days I made the trek between the pool house and kitchen dozens of times, carrying boxes of produce through where dozens of clumps of helenium were being planted, and wondered what it would be like to be so rich. I felt like I’d landed on Planet Billionaire: 10 or so acres of privilege and excess.

       On Wednesday, a team of seven tabletop designers spent 12 hours arranging foliage and owl and turkey candles and sculptures spilling a cornucopia of fruit and nuts, as anticipation built. When the head butler, a Brit who spent a lot of time making himself tea and eating jelly sandwiches, rushed through the house calling “Wheels up!” all hell broke loose. Everyone scurried about to ensure all was in order before our lords and masters descended upon the household. If I were rich, I wondered, would I have servants unscrew my Perrier cap as did the lady of the house?

       We made lunch for six. As we lined up platters of sea bass, lobster, and salads (lentil, Caesar, arugula — each one fiddled with by the chef with the precision of a diamond cutter), the missus sent word through her New York butler, Anthony, for us to prepare sandwiches. Back to the pool house with the uneaten food, no one daring to tell the boss that there’d been a communication breakdown. The bill from the Clamman alone was $700. When the chef saw the sandwiches I’d prepared he had a minor freakout. I had to start again and cut the crusts off the bread just so.

       On Thursday a half-dozen freelance butlers arrived (one told me he was paid $1,000). Glorified waiters, it was their job to set the tables and serve the food, but mostly to stand around and look servile. It upset me that we went through miles of plastic wrap and aluminum foil, but there was nothing I could do. It was clear the chef had no respect for Americans’ traditional holiday fare, boiling to death huge pots of vegetables and Frenchifying them with lots of butter and cream. Didn’t that go out in the ’70s with Cuisine Minceur?

       Service went smoothly. The chef had me put beads of Sevruga from a large tin on boring white crackers. Only two were eaten. I didn’t amputate any fingers, didn’t elicit much ire from the chef. But since he never had the opportunity to taste any of my food, I knew he didn’t respect me. I learned many lessons, most notably: Cooking is something I love, so I now I reserve it as a gift for the people I love.

—

       Debra Scott is a real estate columnist at The Star.

“At a certain point you’re going to plan that gathering which you won’t be able to attend. You’re going to make your final arrangements.”  — from the blog The Screaming Pope

       Q. Dear Pope, as you know, I’ve been thinking about this for some time, and recently settled on Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, which I’ve been hoping to show you one day soon. Should I select a plot on higher land, so that drainage is good?

       “Everyone is opting for higher land these days, but remember Venice and Amsterdam have survived below sea level for centuries. Not to be overly phobic, but higher land also puts your plot in danger of terrorists and drones.”

       Q. Should I buy four plots instead of two, to give my wife and me more space?

       “I would opt for four plots so you can offer your mourners some amenities. With your extra two plots, you can build a little workout area equipped with, say, a treadmill and elliptical for those who want to get aerobic while they’re paying their respects. I personally can’t remember anyone unless my heart rate has reached a certain level. A normal heart rate is like death to me.”

       Q. Should I put a little mini wall around the plots to show that we are important and make it easier for those coming to pay their respects to find us? Should I put a nice little bench nearby to encourage people to give a little more time to sitting and remembering all that was good about me?

       “Again, affirmative . . . my rule of thumb is bigger than a gravestone, but less than a full-blown mausoleum. Oh, one little point: Your bench should a have a plaque. People have short memories and by the time they get to the bench, they may not be able to remember who you are.”

       Q. I struggle between the cheaper and environmentally preferable option of cremation versus full-body burial. But in the end, does cremation seem too final?

       “I like cremation since it’s sexier. I always wanted my ashes scattered in the women’s locker room at Equinox so that I would be surrounded by naked women for all eternity.”

       Q. Should I write my obit and the farewell remarks that will be made at my send-off? Or should I just trust that whoever writes them is going to know what they are doing?

       “Remember Ashford and Simpson? I think the obit can be written by you and your eulogist with one of those little EMI doodads next to the credit, in case the eulogy itself makes it to the Top 40.”

       Q. Should I engrave on the tombstone a link to a website that will have a robust offering of my history, speeches, awards, achievements, etc.?

       “A no-brainer.”

       Q. What should my epitaph emphasize — my good-heartedness, my veteran’s status, my love of family, my Honorable Mention All-City Football Team recognition in Omaha, the love of my cat, Reed?

       “I wouldn’t go into any of these items. Everyone knows those things. I will share with you what I think to be an extraordinary aspect of your character. It may seem like a small thing, but the way you comb your hair says so much. First of all, you are the only guy I know who still puts a comb through his hair and certainly one of the only ones in our age group who still has something left to put a comb through. But I’m sure even if you were bald you would still pull the old comb out in polite company. It’s a spiritual act, by Jove, and the world needs to know this. Combing and praying are virtually the same thing for you. So your epitaph could read: ‘He combed with the hand of God,’ or ‘At home with the comb of God,’ or ‘God, where did he get that comb?’ We can work on the details. I don’t think we have it quite yet.”

    Paul Critchlow is writing a memoir tentatively titled “Outrunning the Peter Principle: Tips From an Inveterate Corporate Survivor.” He lives part time on North Haven.

    Francis Levy, a Wainscott resident, is the author of the comic novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com and on The Huffington Post.

    Thank goodness President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Congress to set Thanksgiving permanently on the fourth Thursday in November so that we can follow an annual routine. If Thanksgiving were allowed to fall pell-mell on any random day of the week — like Christmas does — I am not sure how we would get ourselves organized.

    I get so wrapped up in the winter holidays that everything else goes by the boards. Television, newspapers, Facebook? I have no idea what’s going on in the world, beyond the rounds of the Thanksgiving marathon.

    I’ve already spent hours and hours food shopping, not only doing a number at the supermarkets but going to the Green Thumb farm stand in Water Mill and Citarella in Bridgehampton. I’ve ordered the turkey from the Mecox Dairy Farm and the oysters and clams from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, and there are still more shopping trips to come, including Goldberg’s for rye bread, which I want to try in the stuffing for a change, and Breadzilla for sweet treats.

    Things are especially festive around here this year, with two of my grandchildren and their parents visiting from Canada. We don’t  usually pay very much attention to Hanukkah in this household, but it’s also rather nice that it falls on Thanksgiving this time so we don’t have to be confused about when to celebrate it.

    We’ve been eating for a week. The refrigerator and pantry are brimming: aged goat cheeses, pump­kin bread pudding, chicken pot pie, gravlax, whitefish salad, bacon scones, Craig Claiborne’s Chinese green-bean salad, Edward Giobbi’s pork chops in piquant sauce. . . . 

    My husband has become fixated on the new  Jerusalem  cookbook, and he treated us the other night to a delicious chicken-and-bulgar dish with a yogurt and cucumber sauce; he also took advantage of some wonderful extra-late-season local tomatoes, slow-roasting them for an unusually tasty pasta dish. We have had paté mousse as an appetizer and wine with dinner, too — and I won’t mention the mammoth box of fancy cookies my daughter brought home  for the kids.  I will know for sure if all this eating has been bad for my health when I gather my strength and step up on the bathroom scale (perhaps I’ll leave that till next month), but I’ve been enjoying myself immensely.   

    And swiftly, of course, Christmas is approaching. How dare it fall on Wednesday this year? What will we working folks do? Will we shake things up at The Star and publish on Friday so that everyone can go home early on Christmas Eve, then come back the day after Christmas to finish the job? I’m pleased to say this is a conundrum the editor, not I, will  have to solve.