I love Christmas time with its music, food, and presents; I even like to go to church. I especially like to see lights on the trees both inside and outside the houses.
Tonight when I walked my dog I counted all the trees shinning through the windows of the neighborhood houses. All in all I counted 25 indoor, decorated Christmas trees; 23 were dressed in bright colorless lights, only 2 wore the red, yellow, blue, and green bulbs I have loved since I first saw a lighted tree as a young boy.
My wife and I have a twelve foot tree with hundreds of lights and decorating it takes several hours, sometimes days. One year we didn’t finish it in time for our neighborhood dinner party but we had a fun dinner just the same. The unfinished tree was a conversation starter at the table and probably in some of our guests homes the following day.
For many years we had an annual problem decorating our tree, Mary prefers clear lights; I love the colored! But we worked out a solution which keeps at least one of us happy each year. On even numbered years we have clear lights which match most of the trees in our neighborhood; on odd numbered years we use the colored lights and stand out from all the rest.
But it’s the ornaments which we have collected over the past 50 years which endear me to the Christmas past, bring happiness to the Christmas present, and hope to the Christmas to come.
So my wish for all of you tonight is that you will have a Merry Christmas regardless of what color lights you put on your tree. If you don’t put up a tree I still wish you a joyful day tomorrow and each and every day in the new year. (I also wish some of you would put colored lights on your tree so my evening walk would be as fun filled as those of my youth.)
Finally, I can wait until next year; 2011 is an odd numbered year!!
Merry Christmas!