From “Keeping Christmas”
prettily wrapped packages sitting under a Christmas tree do. Many are the children who know the great anticipation and joy that comes with tearing into the wrapping paper and speedily untying the bows that adorn Christmas presents. And many are the adults who know the frightful disarray that can come from the opening of Christmas gifts. But television commentator and author Andy Rooney entreated us to embrace the mounds of used wrapping paper, the piles of torn ribbons, and balls of crumpled bows often left on the floor on Christmas morning, not for what they contain, but for the memories they will later give us. “One of the most glorious messes in the world,” Rooney once said, “is the mess created in the living
T IS A GOOD THING to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.
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But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.
Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellow- men are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the manage- ment of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness—are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas. —HENRY VAN DYKE
u Legendary funny man Bob Hope, shown here in 1950, once said that
the simplest
u The spirit of Christmas emerges through our gift giving when gifts are given with love to show love.
room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.”
Along these lines, newspaper columnist and author William E. Vaughan once described the best Christmas present as: “The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.” And as
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author and humorist Peg Bracken once said, “Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.”
If nothing else, words like these serve to remind us of things that are easy to lose sight of during the holidays—that in addition to parties, presents, and shopping, the true
things are the things that stand out most when one thinks of Christmases past.
spirit of the Christmas season is to be found in simple things, such as love, peace, friendship, family, and charity. As Bob Hope once said: “When we recall Christmases past, we usually find that the simplest things—not the great occasions—give off the greatest glow of happiness.”
Happy holidays, everyone. ■ D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 2
PHOTO: ©TIM PANNELL/CORBIS
PHOTO: ©BETTMANN/CORBIS
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