Seriously he is. I live in Minneapolis and this dude is full of sh*t. Don't listen to anything he says.

The men of my admittedly non-Midwestern acquaintance do have a common language. Mostly, it has to do with big-screen movies involving CGI apes or robots. The price of gasoline is also a unifying theme.

However, at family holiday dinners there is no need to preserve the traditional gender divide. If Garrison Keillor is bored, he should go in the kitchen and offer to cut up some carrots, wash some pots, scrub a counter or look after some kids or dogs. For extra credit, he could even plan ahead and arrange to cook some part of the meal himself.

He can also expend his free time in offering praise, gratitude and encouragement to the people who do all these things. As he must surely know by now, the absence of such encouragement and thanks causes strong women to crack, suddenly hurling a turkey platter through the TV screen or putting their feet down and declaring they will order takeout.

I got one of those printing presses too!! Loved it.

As a man I am glad I get to cook some of the food at Christmas now.

Go back to your good old days, skip Woodstock this time, and try to avoid making the turn onto the Blowhard Turnpike.

Kids, turn on your Ipods and groove. Thanks.

Sincerely,

GenXer

Wow - give him a break you hostile people. This was mostly a nostalgic look at how his Christmas dinners used to be, not a political treatise on sex roles in the home. Further, if you have Old People in your family, just try keeping the Old Men from gathering in the living room and the Old Women from congregating in the kitchen, no matter how liberated your personal household is.

Say what you will, I was captured in the nostalgia. For awhile I thought that he was writing about my family. I would add that discussions about the number of outdoor lights put up by the neighbors and whose was the best was also a topic of keen discussion. Add to that whether Lionel or American Flyer was the best train set!

Perhaps those who replied to this with some negative bent are either under forty or have nothing to be nostalgic about from their childhood Christmas'.

Thanks Garrison! I also forgive you for publishing this article in SALON.

Funny that the subject of Christmas should get Garrison Keillor all down and nostalgic, without a nice thing to say about Christmas Present. Where's the salvation? Where's the beauty? What's the difference between talking cars and electronic gadgets? It's the same fiddle-with instinct that draws people to both things -- it's just that cars today are mostly diagnosed by computer so we don't fiddle with them so much anymore. Talk about fuddy duddy, man.

I usually love Garrison Keillor's writing, but today I'm with Matt Edwards (below).

...the detractors simply do not get the point.

Thank you, Mr. K., for another of your sublime, melancholy elegies. Most of the time, I tend to be glad my past is past, and prefer to forget most of it. But reading your pieces always gets me thinking about my own family history, and how things were when I was a kid, and how changed they are now. Although my young days were very different from yours, it's the tone that counts - that mix of fondness, sadness and a quiet smile of amusement at the vagaries of time and the foolishness of mankind. It's the voice of an adult soul looking on things with the bemusement that comes of living through many years and staying whole and sane through it.

Instead of puling about how your viewpoint isn't the same as yours, perhaps the naysayers might take a minute to realize that the point is this: Everybody has a history, everything changes, what seems fixed and immutable today will change tomorrow, and the capacity to remember and cherish the past gives us the grounding and strength to span the present and stride into the future.

Actually, the thing that bugs me about Garrison's columns is that it NEVER ushers in any thoughts of my past or my family. His thoughts and memories seem so specific, so classified, that I simply cannot relate. And I'm always reading, trying to pull something out of his paragraphs that might be close to something that I've experienced, but all I sense is this grating feeling, as though, HE'S TRYING TOO HARD. Always.

"His thoughts and memories seem so specific, so classified, that I simply cannot relate."

This is a very sad statement. If no one is allowed to be specific, or to be different, than no one can relate to anyone else, ever. If no one can be a specific age, a specific gender, or have specific and unique thoughts, then there is no way to cross the divides between us.

What you're really saying that you don't think Mr. Keillor should be allowed to be who he is, just because he isn't like you.

The truth is that EVERYONE has very specific memories and thoughts, even people we imagine are just like us. Finding out those differences is what makes the human race bigger. Trying to cram those differences down just makes us smaller.

You know, Garrison's got a point. He's talking about the commonalities people had in decades past. The common interests, the common language. And these responses pretty much nail home that idea. Some people are writing really nasty things. Do you imagine Garrison Keillor doesnt read these? Would you say these things to his face?

Only in such a fragmented and impersonal age can people feel so free to be rude to others. It's true for me as well. I find myself getting in arguments via email that I never would in person. That's because it's cold and impersonal and you dont get the humanity inherent in just sitting and talking with someone.

I'm a programmer, and I so rarely see and interact with other people directly that when I went to the mall for Christmas shopping last week, I couldnt help but find myself amazed at all the people. I found myself hungry just to see different faces, feel people's presence, hear people talk. I could have sat down and just watched people for hours. It felt like such a reassuring and humanizing experience. I know it sounds sad but I'm probably not alone.

And this separation causes people to be extremely polarized. Have you noticed how "yes" has been replaced with "absolutely" in the last 5 years?

If you've ever listened to Garrison Keillor speak, you'd know he fills the room with a warmth and humanity that's hard to find these days. I welcome more articles from him.