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Sadly, Christmas this year is not the same as many I have known. For more than three decades before this year, my festive pleasure started months before December. I planned, designed and printed home-made festive cards. After a couple of weeks, the cards were done. Then came the queue at the post office for stamps and air-mail labels, before returning home to enjoy two special nights writing out a few personal words of laughter and love to top off those of good cheer already on the 240 or so cards for family and friends (the number changed each year as death, divorce and other woes kicked in). I would end the exercise by doing a final check of names and addresses, then proceed to lick the stamps to put on envelopes. All that would remain was to stop at a postbox to send these bits of my happy heart out into the world, near and far. That was then, many times over, year after year; never a chore, always a joy, as everything linked to Christmas should be. But this year, all my Christmas greetings are of the online variety e-mails and WhatsApp chats. Why the change? I am older, frailer, poorer, and still trying to come to terms with the Covid-19 torment that took so many lives. So, yes, I see this as a Grey Christmas, not a White Christmas as Bing Crosby sings. Not the same Christmas Past. Grey, too, because many of my fellow oldies and myself are surfing the Grey Wave sweeping in, finding it difficult to come to terms with much in a newfangled working world that offers little to seniors who have to cope with rising prices.  Still, this is Christmas. So let us look to the future and try to spot the vibrant red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet of the rainbow that must be near, all set to brighten the dark of recent years.