Eskewpades

HAM AND EGOS  By Steve Eskew Allow me to be the first to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. In July? Yup July, and believe me, celebrating five months early makes unmitigated sense in today’s senior centers. Tick-tock, tick-tock. A big bah-humbug to the pandemic for last December. Stranding Santa at the North Pole plunged those of us in our second childhood into the opposite of jolly.   Worse: zooming awkward Christmas greetings on our computers ignited innumerable squabbles. We curmudgeons demanded compensation from the universe for our lost holiday. We stewed. We steamed. We brainstormed. Then I recalled one summer when our kids were at that magic age when they still had visions of sugarplums dancing in their naughty noggins. Surprise! Grandmama threw the rugrats a special shindig. Christened “Christmas in July,” the party thrilled one and all.   My retelling this memory to my hot-to-trot senior colleagues jingled some bells in our belfries. “December be damned. Let’s do Christmas