A very Merry Christmas to our Christian friends and readers! And, really, to everyone, since Christmas has become a universal holiday in which all are welcome to participate. Christmas is a season of joy and hope, and it is important to remember that, notwithstanding the conflicts and the crises of the moment, there have rarely been times in human history when there has been so much reason to be hopeful.
Every year we (my wife, that is) put up this Nativity scene. It is stored in a box that says “1958” in my mother’s handwriting. I remember it from when I was a kid. We inherited it at some point, years ago. It is possible that a year was missed somewhere, but I am pretty sure that it has graced either my parents’ home or mine, every Christmas from 1958 to the present:
Being blessed with four children and eight grandchildren, with more to come, it is reasonable to expect that this Nativity scene will go for another 70 years or more. When you get to a certain stage in life, such continuity is welcome.
Unlike the Nativity scene, our Christmas tree is new this year. The old one gave up the ghost. We have succumbed to the inevitable and are now using an artificial tree. It is pretty enough:
But I miss the days when our kids were young, and our real trees were so tall that there were two years when a friend erected scaffolding around them so the kids could hang ornaments all the way to the top. I posted a picture of that one year, and several readers chided me because our scaffolding was not OSHA-compliant. But our kids survived, as kids do. Someday, one of them will inherit the Nativity scene that my parents bought in 1958. And they all have fond memories of Christmases past.
