Somewhere along the line I’ve lost something. Not long ago I was a little critter bursting with excitement thinking of the wonderful, shiny, lovely toys under the tree, wrapped in joyfully colourful paper. This time of the year was filled with the thoughts of new goodies to play with.
The older folk use to say, all they want for Christmas was love and togetherness, but that didn’t make any sense. The lecture of, the joy of giving and the true meaning of Christmas was completely lost in the excitement of, ‘what am I going to get’!
Suddenly, in a mere blink of the eye, the world has changed completely. The content of the colourful packages under the Christmas tree are utterly unimportant. In fact, their mere existence is more decorative than anything else. Sadly you realise shiny toys, of whatever monetary value, do not bring eternal happiness!
Yet there is a new excitement. The thought of having my family around me in a jovial, happy en content mood, now generates the excitement. I cannot think of anything more wonderful than sitting around a fully laden table with my wife and children, and their appendages, and enjoying each other’s love and togetherness.
Oh my, those old folk of years gone by were right! Even worse, I’m now one of those old folk! It feels like yesterday when I was a youngster with wild dreams and philanthropic ideals in my eyes, and suddenly I’m sitting here with back problems and swollen feet. How did this happen so quickly? What went wrong?
I look around me and I see our once joyful puppy, that use to steal our shoes, is now an old smelly incontinent dog, filled with arthritic moans and groans. Our furniture is rather tacky and the dining room table has awful scratch marks all over it. Replace it? Never! Every one of those marks tells a story.
A story of a family that grew up here with all the joys and tears of living a full and normal live. The old dog, the well used furniture and the scratched dining room table is the historic record of a happy family! Let’s fill that table once more, and add a few more scratch marks if need be.
May we all enjoy a Christmas filled with love and togetherness, and maybe the odd shiny new toy!
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