I'm not normally a holiday crank, but year two of A Very COVID Christmas has me feeling slightly Ebenezer Scrooge-ish.

Last year, we missed a great deal, but there was a warmth, a kindness in the air from a wartime unity. Holiday routines were altered but offered respite from the sadness and isolation.

But in winter 2021, the grim pandemic realities have gone nowhere. While people are traveling and big dinners are scheduled again, the cruelties of our increasingly fractured society remain. All Christmas, no charity.

Take the "supply chain" controversy inspiring rage across the country. If you listened to politicians and pundits, you'd think our grocery store shelves were bare, that we wait months for necessities.

The reality, however, is that our selection of ready merchandise has been slightly and temporarily reduced. Have we become so spoiled that even a worldwide pandemic is no excuse for the smallest disruption to our consumption? Can we withstand no frustration, regardless how mild?

We talk about inflation, as if 5 million people hadn't died, three quarters of a million in our country alone. We don't mention the millions of American women who had to leave jobs to care for their children. We ignore the untold numbers of workers who quit after two years of being jerked around, furloughed one minute and working overtime the next: the airline stewards and massage therapists and fast-food employees screamed at for enforcing mask rules, the waiters (federal minimum wage: $2.13 an hour) whose employment became unpredictable as their frustrations skyrocketed.

Isn't it healthy to rethink life in the face of death, to quit your job, to go back to school, to spend more time with family? Is it wrong that people are increasingly less interested in working unfulfilling, demanding jobs that pay poorly and offer few benefits?

It doesn't feel very Christmas-y to prioritize the stock market's unceasing growth over human lives. But maybe that's the "bah humbug" in me. Maybe I just don't get the joy of unfettered capitalism.

Otherwise, I'd understand how people furious at pandemic restrictions could refuse to take a simple, free action to help end them.

It's like we're all standing outside of our burning house. There's a lake nearby, brimming with water. A third of us, though, won't even pick up a bucket.

"You can't make me," they say.

Yes, but can we beg? Can we plead? Can we, weary of all these variants and delays and deaths, ask you to help yourself, if no one else?

Do we have to keep watching our stuff burning up inside?

Humankind shared a collective, horrible experience these last couple of years, but it has not united us. We see before us the evidence of our human frailty, the proof that our squabbles are temporal and transitory, but, somehow, we're more self-obsessed than ever.

The enmity is enough to make me long for The War Against the War On Christmas, when people wished you "Merry Christmas" (heavy emphasis on the word "Christmas") with such vehemence it sounded less a seasonal greeting and more a threat of bodily harm.

Yes, there's warmth inside the walls of my home, from our fireplace and from the hugs of my family, from the baking fruitcake and the mulling cider. That I can control; that I can make so.

But my Christmas wish is that we could find a way to extend the walls of our homes outward, in our minds, further and further, until they reach the limits of our towns, our states, our countries, until they reach the end of the world.

Then, maybe, we would see every living being as a member of our household, our family. We would love them as we love our families, as we love ourselves.

And that would be a merry Christmas indeed.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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