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As we find ourselves in the middle of the holiday season &mdash; the week between Christmas and New Year&rsquo;s &mdash; we continue to enjoy the &ldquo;spirit of the season.&rdquo;
				Well, don&rsquo;t we?
				I mean, we are celebrating all that is good and doing our very best to make the most of an extremely difficult time &mdash;a/k/a the pandemic.
				Aren&rsquo;t we?
				We did just celebrate Christmas &mdash; the birth of Jesus Christ &mdash; and with it, the arrival of all those presents from Santa Claus. We have to be in good spirits. right?
				Well, sadly, it seems there are still far too many Ebeneezer Scrooge types around who do everything they can to ruin the holidays &mdash; to diminish our spirit.
				These miscreants are often referred to as &ldquo;mean-spirited.&rdquo;
				The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines &ldquo;mean-spirited&rdquo; as &ldquo;exhibiting or characterized by meanness of spirit.&rdquo;
				Simple, right? But perhaps you can get a better understanding of the term &ldquo;mean-spirited&rdquo; by looking at the synonyms for the term.
				They include: contemptuous, deprecating, derogatory, disdainful, disparaging, obnoxious, opprobrious, scornful, snide, snotty, unkind, unkindly, unloving; bad [slang], bitchy, catty, cruel, despiteful, hateful, malevolent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, nasty, spiteful, vicious, virulent, devious, scoundrelly, scurvy, snakelike, acrimonious, bitter, envious, jaundiced, jealous, rancorous, resentful, vindictive, vitriolic, baleful, baneful, evil, harsh, hostile, inimical, acrid, caustic, poisonous, scathing, venomous,.
				That&rsquo;s quite a list. I can&rsquo;t imagine anyone would enjoy being referred to as any of those awful names.
				Yet, many aspire daily to behave that way. Certainly this has been quite prevalent during this awful pandemic, pushing many to the brink of bad behavior.
				But it far too many cases, it has gone far beyond bad behavior. It has gotten so bad in so many places that it is threatening the very fabric of society &mdash; deteriorating who and what we are to the point that we begin to dislike one another &mdash; even despise each other.
				And that can not be good. Not if we hope to rebound from this pandemic and get back to some form of the normal life we lived before.
				So we must endeavor to be the opposite of mean-spirited. Here is a list of antonyms for mean-spirited that would make us all better human beings:
				Compassionate, good, good-hearted, kind, kind-hearted, kindly, sympathetic, warm, warm-hearted, affable, agreeable, amiable, cordial, friendly, genial, gracious, nice, pleasant, affectionate, amorous, sweet, tender, tender-hearted, humane, altruistic, high-minded, humanitarian, magnanimous, noble, philanthropic (also philanthropical), benevolent, benign, benignant, unmalicious and &mdash; loving.
				The key is the last one &mdash; loving. We all have love in our hearts and we need to show it &mdash; to live it. It&rsquo;s a good thing. We are all in this together, is what we hear every day. And it is true. Nobody is safe from the coronavirus. We must fight it back together.
				This is not a political battle &mdash; never has been; never should have been. It is about the public health &mdash; yours, mine, everybody&rsquo;s.
				As the New Year approaches, put a lotta love in your heart, wear it on your sleeve and check the mean-spiritedness at the 2020 door.

Beyond Byline: In 2021, let’s leave mean-spirited feelings behind