Christmas - what's it all about?

Christmas - what's it all about?

My wife and I bought our starter house, a small Cape, when we got married.  We are still in our “starter” house because it became home as we fixed it up, started our journey of life as a couple, raised our daughters, and now sit here in the sun room we added years ago, watching the snow blanket the neighborhood just one week before Christmas.  Our family has grown up celebrating and enjoying each of the holidays the calendar brings, but I think it would be a unanimous vote that the Christmas season is the favorite.  We were reminiscing about an overnight trip we took with the girls to Portsmouth, New Hampshire during a snow storm to visit the living history village of Strawberry Banke during the Christmas season.  As our small car slipped and slid its way up Route 95, we were all questioning our sanity, but once we finally reached our destination and watched the saucer-like snowflakes (we have only seen in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and the movie Elf) gently fall outside the restaurant we were now cozied up in, it was more than worth the journey.  It felt like Christmas and we were together to enjoy it.

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Thanksgiving - "giving thanks to whom and for what?"

Thanksgiving - "giving thanks to whom and for what?"

If you are lucky, you have family and close friends to share a Thanksgiving meal with this week.  For many, it is an abundance of food, football and catching up with family we do not see enough.  For others it could be an emotional day of old wounds, heated disagreements or just plain loneliness.  Wherever you are on Thursday, I pray it is a day of “giving thanks” for you.  Thanksgiving became an official American holiday in 1864 during the Civil War, per proclamation of the President, “Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe.”  Lincoln’s intent was to bring us together and to remember that we share the same creator that provides everything we have.

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