Blog 3673 -11.25.2025

My Favorite Time Of Year

In a couple of days the Holiday Season officially begins or at least Thanksgiving Day used to be the official start of the Yuletide Season, the Christmas holidays. As a boy my birthday, Thanksgiving, and the Friday after were just teasers for the couple of weeks off school for Christmas and New Years that school kids every where back then considered The Holiest of Days.

Sadly, the Holiday Season is a difficult time for many because it is a time when they count their losses and not their blessings. They look around the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables and focus on who is no longer there rather than who is. The ghosts of Christmas past loom large and the fearful ghosts of Christmas yet to be, terrorizes their thoughts, while the ghost of Christmas present is almost ignored entirely.

It is a mistake to spend so much time thinking about the past or the future that we fail to enjoy fully the joy that is ours today. The poet has said:

“Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine

I’ll taste your strawberries and I’ll drink your sweet wine.

A million tomorrows shall all pass away

E’re I forget all the joy that is mine today.”

My wife and I visited our son and our twenty-seven month old granddaughter Sunday afternoon and she was playing with a little toy xylophone, striking the colored metal plates quite pleased with an original tune that she composed on the spot. She handed me the toy and striking stick challenging me to produce a tune. I played the only notes that I could remember and asked my wife and son if they recognized the song. They did not so I sang the words as I played the familiar notes again:

Joy

To

The

World 

The

Lord

Is 

Come

Let

Earth

Receive

Her

King

Happy Holidays my friends, however you choose to honor and celebrate them. Instead of counting our losses, let us remember the words of Tiny Tim, “Bless us everyone.” And those of the one hundred and sixteen year old man who shared his secret to living a long and happy life. “One has to always be making new and younger friends so that he or she never out lives all their friends.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8dxQmBk6mABg73L1lf_LdpiUXU4W8yy/view?usp=drivesdk

The Gift