In Search of Christmas

Do you ever need to "feel" Christmas? I am not talking about the excitement of giving and receiving gifts and other Christmas traditions, I am talking about the real feeling of Christmas.

I am probably not making any sense to you, after all I am not making any sense to me. I remember as a boy having that feeling. I can't explain it to you if you have never had it before. I find that as I grow older, that the feeling is harder and harder to find. I do not know if life has caused that feeling to be dulled or if the marketing of our modern times has dulled it, or if just age itself has caused the fire to burn down.

I told my wife the other night that I would really like to find some small little church or community putting on an old fashioned Christmas pageant. I thought that maybe there I could spark that "feeling" of Christmas and relive for a moment what is so hard to hold on to. So we kept our eyes open for something that might fit our hectic schedule and what do you know, a small community right down the road about ten miles was putting on a living Bethlehem promotion as a community event. I thought that surely I could find that "feeling" in this atmosphere so we tentatively penciled in this date and went about our daily lives.

Late that afternoon we were frantically working on Christmas projects that we were growing short on time with when my wife's phone rang. It was her mother and father and they were coming through town and wanted to meet us for supper so we said sure because we truly love being around them and we enjoy their company. My wife and I knew that this would put us short on time on the Living Bethlehem, but we thought that it would all work out. Well, supper ran longer than expected, the visit was nice but we were really cutting it close now. So we swung by to gather up our grandson and off we went to find that "feeling" of Christmas. Needless to say, as we arrived in the little community expecting to see a large group gathered somewhere and cars everywhere our first pass through town yielded just a small sleepy little town. Disappointed we turned around and hit a few side streets until we finally found it. The wise men and the shepherds were all gone as were the host of singing angels and all that was left was the empty stage where everything had been. People were gathering up and loading stuff into their cars. We had missed it all.

I feel like that is how it has been for me for a while. Christmas has been elusive to me. I do not know nor do I understand what sparks that feeling that I have spoken of, but I hope that you have found it this year. As for me, personally I am still in search of Christmas.

Secrets

We all have them. Some we guard better than others, some we really don't guard at all. Some we will take to the grave with us and some, ..................some were destined to be found out.

When I first began this blog back in May, it was my little secret. It is not that it was anything bad or something that needed to be hidden, it was just mine. I never had any intention of anyone knowing who Ghostwriter really was. The problem with that is the same problem that you usually encounter with most secrets. A slip here or a slip there and suddenly your secret is no more. Such is the case with my blog. My plan was to never tell a soul about it and then a friend of mine asked me point blank if I had a blog and I stuttered and stammered and then I simply said yes because I did not want to lie. That seemed like no big deal. I have never met this friend and we only speak on a rare occasion in the business world. Next my wife and I sat down at my computer one night and ghostwriter was stilled logged in, so naturally the question was "who is ghostwriter?". Next was my daughter, after my wife found out I would occasionally leave my blog up on my home computer while I was working on it, never thinking that someone would come by and see my work. Needless to say she came by. Oh well, I write things that mean nothing and amuse only me so who cares if a little secret has escaped.

My wife and I have a few secrets of our own. They are not bad secrets, they are funny secrets. Occasionally one of us will do something really stupid and we will look at the other one and say "this will be our secret". Sometimes even years down the road all we have to do is just make a little comment and the other will laugh and know exactly which secret we are laughing about.

Sometimes secrets can be a beautiful thing between people and sometimes it can be this monster that is ruling your life. This all goes to show that secrets have a life of their own. Mine was a harmless little secret that was found out. What secrets are you hiding and hoping against hope that they will never be found out? Secrets can and will come to life when you least expect them to.

The one thing that I have figured out is that a secret only has power while it is still a secret. Once it is revealed, it's power and it's allure is gone forever.

GW

The Old Goats Club

As I walked down the hall today, I saw him sitting in the customer lounge. He was patiently waiting for an opportunity to visit with me about a small ad in the local American Legion newsletter that is put out every month. As I approached, he reached out his hand and we shook in the customary way that men in our society do. Then I sat down by his side and we began to visit.

He recently celebrated his 87th birthday but you would never know it by the way that he acts and carries himself. Yes, his gate is slower than when I met him over 20 years ago and he walks with a cane, but his handshake is still firm and mind is very sharp.  He had been a successful businessman in our community for more years than I even know, but now he is semi-retired and he still stays very active in the community.

As we sat and visited about the typical odds and ends that we would visit about, such as how my family was doing and how business is and those such things, the conversation somehow turned to the morning meeting of the "Old Goats Club". You have to be from our community for this name to mean anything to you. You probably have a club like this in your own town, but you probably know them by another name. The "Old Goats Club" is simply a group of elderly retired men that gather on a daily basis at the local coffee shop.

As the conversation turned to the subject of their meeting, he slowly grew quiet and spoke more as a man removed than the man sitting before me. He said "you know, there are only three of us left in the club that served in the war". They had spent the majority of their coffee time today talking about where they were and what they were doing on this day 69 years ago. I had been so busy with the day that it had eluded me that it was "Pearl Harbor Day". I almost felt ashamed when I realized what he was speaking about. He relived with great clarity where he was and what he was doing as the news began to break about Pearl Harbor. As he stirred himself from his trip down memory lane, he stood up and apologized for taking up my time because he knew how busy I was. I, on the other hand was compelled to hear more, so I told him that I loved to hear those stories and I told him that my uncles used to share their stories with me about the war. Upon seeing my interest he slowly sat back down and the fog of the past again enveloped us as he continued to speak of that day. Finally, he had spoken all that he had time for and again he apologized for taking my time and he went on his way.

I did not mention to him that the Uncles that I had made reference to were both gone now and their stories and their memories that they shared with me are about all that I have left of them. As he walked away I wondered how much longer we would have men like him who were a walking history in our midst.

I spent the rest of today reflecting on his stories and I thought about the men around our nation that are just like him. I thought about my uncles and the stories that they told. I thought about all the different men that I have known and met through the years who served in that war. I heard a startling statistic the other day that every ninety seconds we lose another veteran of World War II. I hope and pray that if you have a chance to visit with one of these precious veterans, you will slow down for a few minutes in your busy schedule and soak up the history that will soon no longer speak from their lips but simply be written in books for people to see but never understand.

Mr. Thompson, my day was richer for you having taken the time to share the past with me. It was men like you that have made our future what it is.

Thank you.

GW

Traditions

Webster defines Tradition as "an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)"


To me and my family the holiday season that we have entered into is all about traditions. As a boy growing up in central Texas, we had a few things that you could call traditions. Things like we would eat a large meal on Thanksgiving day somewhere and that we would have a Christmas tree up at some point in the holiday season if my brothers and sister and I were persistent, and somewhere on or around Christmas, we would eat another big meal and open our presents somewhere. These things might sound like traditions to you, but to me they were just tendencies given to the winds of convenience around the holiday season.

I love to go to lunch periodically with each of my children as the time allows for both them and myself. Needless to say, I am always busy with my work and lunch is something I only get to escape a couple of times each week My son is a paramedic in a neighboring community with a wife and a son and my daughter is a full time college student with a full time job as well. When that rare moment lines up where I can do lunch with them, I jump at the opportunity. It was on one such luncheon a few weeks back that I realized how my wife and I had firmly established traditions in our lives and the lives of our children that have given them peace and security in the holiday season. My son was venting his frustration at the ever changing plans of his in-laws for the Thanksgiving celebrations. He looked at me and said, "that is one of the things that I love about our family. I know every Thanksgiving day exactly where we were going to be and at Christmas I knew exactly where we were going to be. I never had to worry about it, we just knew where we would all be". 


Wow, as I soaked up that nostalgic moment of traditions, it took me back to the early days when my wife and I were first married. We each came from broken homes and then were each blended with new families from our parents second marriage and yes, quite frankly I hated the holidays and I especially hated Christmas. We never knew for sure where we were going to be and the only thing I could count on for sure was a pair of socks from somebody that just wasn't sure what I liked or wanted. My wife and I decided on that first Christmas that on Christmas morning, come what may, we were going to be at our home for Christmas. God has been gracious to my family and he has allowed that tradition to have never been broken in the 27 years that we have celebrated Christmas together. On Christmas morning, my children (while they were home) knew that on Christmas morning they were going to be in their beds waking up to their presents and to their family. There have been a few times that for one reason or another since they have left home and began families of their own that our children were not there on Christmas morning. That made me sad, but their was great comfort to me knowing that if they decided the night before to come home for Christmas, that their mother and I would be there. After all, where else would we be on Christmas morning, It is our Tradition.