MERRY CHRISTMAS

    I hope this Christmas season finds you all safe and surrounded by people you Love. It has been a 

tumultuous year, but we are hopefully heading for better times in 2021. I would like to offer you an 

excerpt from my book that describes my Christmas as a child.

   

     Christmas was my favorite time of year. It wasn’t only the presents that I loved, it was the season

itself. For us, the season started four weeks before Christmas with the placing of an Advent wreath on 

the center of our kitchen table. This wreath had four candles, one representing each week of the season.

Three of the candles were white, and the fourth was purple. Every night before dinner, my dad would 

read the Advent prayer for that day, and light a candle. The second week, two candles would be lit, and 

so forth. By the fourth week, all four candles would be lit at the start of dinner and remain aflame until 

dinnertime was over. When all of the candles were lit, we knew we were ever closer to the big day. 

Sometime in the middle of Advent, we would go as a family up into the mountains to select and cut our 

own Christmas tree. When we got it home, we would begin putting up the modest decorations that 

characterized the season for us. We never had snow globes or the miniature, light-up Christmas

villages in our own house, but I had seen them in stores and other people’s homes and thought they 

were absolutely magical. Christmas Eve was the start of the biggest part of our celebration. Our family 

would exchange gifts; the siblings drew one name and that sister or brother would be the person to 

whom they’d give a present. Each child also gave a gift to Mom and Dad, and our parents would give 

each of us children a single gift. We would go to midnight Mass. Then early on Christmas

morning, we would all sneak down to the Christmas tree. There would be eight stockings (handsewn 

by Mom) hung on the fireplace mantel, filled with a tangerine, new toothbrush, small tube of 

toothpaste, Life Savers, and a small toy. Then, each of us received one big (fifteen-dollar) present from 

Santa.