Ghosts of Christmas Past

Some random memories of Christmas from my childhood:

• I always had terrible trouble falling asleep Christmas Eve. Some years I remember I would stay up almost all night - not like I was trying to catch Santa or anything, I was so excited I could just never go to sleep. I remember one year I was allowed to open one present Christmas Eve, and it was the album soundtrack to The Muppet Movie - Rainbow Connection and all. I remember putting the album on Repeat and listening to it Over and Over All Night Long.
  
  
• Another year, earlier, I remember getting a Sesame Street "Bert" puppet and taking him to bed with me.
  
  
• Yet another year, I dreamed I had woken up, gone into the living room with my parents and I had gotten a couple presents - clothes, mostly, no big deal. I woke up for real with a feeling of terror - that I had had a lousy Christmas morning.
  
  
• There's a Christmas picture that I'll dig up and post - I'm sitting in the floor with my brother wearing Green Bay Packers pajamas. Huh? We live in Tennessee - why in the world had I wanted Packers PJ's?
  
  
• Other bits of recollections: My parents audiotaping Christmas morning for several years; always getting an apple as the last thing in my stocking; getting the Shaun Cassidy "Da Doo Ron Ron" album (ok, the laughing and mocking will now commence..................................feel better? Moving on...); the puppet theatre; the TRC Total Control Racing set that ultimately proved my parents were Santa; wandering outside to the front yard late in the evening and singing Christmas Carols softly to myself (and someone else, of course); the weather guys doing "Santa-tracking reports"; one year we visited my grandmother in Atlanta for Christmas, and my parents had to explain that Santa just brought the presents to her apartment. It wasn't for several years that I looked back and said, "Ohhhhh". How they hid the presents in the trunk or something I'll never know

I have many more, I suppose, but that's a random sampling.

We went to our church's Christmas Eve service tonight, our quartet sang a few songs and my spirits were lifted considerably. For several weeks I've been in a paranoid funk, first with the flu epidimic, now worse with the terror warnings. Remembering these happy Christmases and being reminded of the simple message of peace at Christmas has helped a good deal. I can't wait to see the faces of my kids in the morning.

I pray that our nation and its people remain safe, and that His will be done.