Blog 2611 – 12.22.2022

Hallmark’s Motto…

“Caring Enough To Give The Very Best.” This time of year many people go way over budget and run up their credit card debt buying gifts that they cannot afford when the best gifts are only tokens of affection that remind the recipient that the giver was thinking of them. And I know we have all received gifts that cause us to wonder, “What was he or she thinking when they got me this?”

This is my seventy-second Christmas and it is unlikely, at least this go round, that I will have that many more so I would like to give everyone I know a little token to remember me by.

I am hoping that my wife will feel up to attending a family get together at our niece’s home on Sunday. Our son Jonathan and his lovely wife Lauren are hoping to meet us there. I am planning, as I say if my wife Linda is up for the outing, to don my Santa suit and be a surprise guest at least for a few minutes before dinner. My wife got me a new Santa tee-shirt that I plan to wear with jeans under my Santa suit so that I can make a quick change before the meal. The beard and wig make it pretty impossible to eat and I plan to enjoy the feast.

On my last away work assignment before retiring this time last year I was in Nebraska and to pass the time alone when I was not working I frequented the resale shops in the small town of Norfolk, Nebraska, Johnny Carson’s home town, and collected Santa Claus figurines. I have more than enough of them to be able to pick out one for each of the guest who will be at this special Christmas family gathering on Sunday. I am not entirely sure who will make it to the get-together but my version of Mr. Claus was a Boy Scout so he will be prepared with a few extra wrapped little Santa’s that he can write names on if there are extra guests. Santa will quickly empty his sack and no one will complain too much that the jolly ole elf got to hand out his gifts first, after all he will have had a long night’s work prior to this dinner and some allowances will be made for him. I mean not everyone has Santa drop by for Christmas dinner.

For years to come and perhaps in the case of the younger guests long after this Santa impersonator has left his Santa suit to another to continue the tradition these little Santa’s will be reminders of a Christmas dinner past when Santa stopped by to visit on his way home to the North Pole or to that much needed vacation in Florida with Mrs. Claus.

You see I believe in Santa Claus and that there is a little Santa in all of us and that this is the gift we all have to give – a little bit of ourselves. Merry Christmas to all.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

Here Comes Santa Claus – Gene Autry