Maybe six…seven years old; I can still see…
The Lionel Trains Christmas catalog; in color; page after page of beautiful trains; different track configurations; old-fashioned freight-carrying steam-engines and their coal-cars and freight cars with sliding doors; stream-lined models pulling passenger cars; people inside that you could see through the celluloid windows; flashing track-crossing signals…
Macy's store windows; amazing; beautiful; imaginative; wishing I could enter that magical world…
The lighted trees I could see through neighbors' windows…
Years later; the army; Christmas in Paris; night; snow-falling; trees in every store window; we're walking up the Champs-Elysées…a dream; but it's real…
Wonderful Christmas memories; no goblins; no spoilsports; always snow. Never rain. Ever.
And my favorite movie; the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol; 1951. Top of my list.
I mean, if there was any unhappy memory, I've buried it. Spoil Christmas? No way.
And in that spirit…not blind to the suffering, the horrors experienced every moment of every day by people all over the world, our apparent need to accept the specter of an eternally unsettled, universally unresolved, state of living…I'm making my own commitment; to Christmas as I've always known and experienced it—as Christmas past, present and forever to be the future of my life—to nurture the good, to work on changing the direction in which we seem to be charging; to be who I am, to help where I can, to proselytize for self-exploration and realignment, preaching peace; with the hope that inevitably; the Big Boss, our Ultimate Decider, Chief of all Chiefs; will sigh, shake his/her/its head and say:
Listen up, people;
Enough is enough…
This
is
my
final
word…