As we find ourselves preparing for the wonderful Christmas season, my thoughts always return to the Christmas of my childhood. I’m sure it is so with most of us.
What always stands out so clearly for me is that the true meaning of Christmas was put into action. I’m the youngest of a family of nine children born into the Great Depression. By today’s standards we were poor. We were far from a church and didn’t get to go very often, and it would have been very easy to ignore Christmas. Mom and dad had very little in the way of material things. What they had most of was children.
However, never can I remember a Christmas at our house spend by ourselves. Our house was very small and crowded, but my mother always rounded up the bachelors, the childless couple or just the widowed and lonely and made sure they came to our house Christmas Day.
I don’t know how she managed it, but she did. Christmas dinner was eaten in shifts, and eat we did. And talk: wonderful conversations by our guests. Games and laughter and the special joy that comes from sharing.
Today, we bake and clean and shop and rush around and moan and groan, and I as much as anyone, but never have I, since childhood, enjoyed a Christmas as much as in those days.
Thank you mom, for the memories of Christmas. Truly magical, truly mystical to a small girl. May you all have a sharing Christmas, filled with grace and thankfulness, as we celebrate the birth of our blessed saviour, Jesus Christ.
Peggy Cetinski
Duncan
