Are you feeling lonely at this time of year?
Does the holiday season always make you depressed?Are you overwhelmed with all the things you feel you have to do and with no one offering you enough help?
Do you feel you have to go through with routines that have lost their meaning or that you never really enjoyed?
Are you being thrown together with people just because they're related to you or connected to you, though you don't really like them?
Are you afraid that your expectations won't be met?
By repeating these seasonal inquiries, Miss Manners does not wish to bring on the annual whining fest.
Rather, she would like to protest the fact that such questions, and their underlying premises, seem to have replaced that simple but hearty American greeting: Happy holidays.
People don't seem to wish one another happy holidays now, so much as they offer and seek commiseration over Thanksgiving and Christmas as affronts to emotional welfare.
Well, pooh. Whoever said that national and religious holidays were intended to bolster up egos, anyway?
Miss Manners is admiringly aware that in the last few years, particular attention has been paid to the homeless and other unfortunate people at holiday time, highlighting what she believes and hopes to be an increase of general compassion in the society at all seasons.
But she would have thought that the reappearance of what was traditionally accepted as the spirit of the holiday season - an opportunity to seek out the needy to share the bounty of both provisions and good will - would have killed off the modern habit of regarding holidays as a source of personal disappointment.
Apparently not. So Miss Manners will now attempt to pinpoint what are perceived as the burdens of holiday meals, in an attempt to relieve them through the attitudes and practices of etiquette. The chief complaints seem to be:
Having to eat with relatives.
Having no relatives or friends with whom to eat.
Having to cook, eat too much or eat things one doesn't like, and clean up.
Miss Manners is convinced that the reversals in attitude about gatherings of relatives - from joy to fear - has to do with the erroneous concept that etiquette is on holiday at such times. Many people recognize that they should behave considerately to strangers and acquaintances, but they voice mistaken relief that this does not apply to families.
After all, those people are related to you. Why should you have to be nice to them?
Because people who are not being considerate are unbearable, that's why. Hence the problem.
Informality should not be confused with rudeness. Picking up the turkey bone is one thing; asking people why they never got married is another. The chief etiquette violation at family gatherings is the lack of restraint on both curiosity and unsolicited advice.
As for those who feel abandoned, Miss Manners cannot help but note that there seem to be so many of them. Surely she is only stating the obvious when she encourages them to seek one another, either among their acquaintance or among the more needy. The antidote for feeling sorry for oneself has always been transferring attention to others.
And finally, the proper holiday wish is for happiness.
Judith Martin is author of "Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium" (Pharos Books).