Beleif

Bing Crosby sings the song “I’ll be home for Christmas” I am not sure if he wrote it or not but have you ever listened to it. I mean have you ever really listened to the words. “I’ll be home for Christmas you can plan on me, I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams” for 31 years I have spent Christmas with essentially the same people, the same feeling, the same traditions. I have had the fortune to spend Christmas with my family. I remember Christmas eves at my great grandmothers, Christmas day wondering what is down the stairs and under the tree at my Grandparents house. And enjoying the company and the tree which holds the history of my family in the ornaments that adorn it, at my Parents house. This year I will be spending Christmas 4493 miles away from that tree that spells Christmas to me. No matter what you do you cannot replace the feeling, you cannot replace that tree. It is wonderful to believe in Santa in reindeer, in the story of Christ, peace on earth, and good will toward men (and women). It is wonderful to believe in frosty the snowman, and snow on Christmas day. In my family traditions, in fact this may be a tradition that only my mom and brother know about, but on Christmas Eve my mother has read to us the story of the birth of Christ out of the bible. Now I would not call myself religious but I would call myself spiritual, I listened to that story every year and one thing always stood out to me and sticks with me more than Santa, frosty and reindeer. In that story it states that on Christmas Eve when the clock strikes midnight the animals can speak. From the first time I heard that I believed. When I was young I was fearful that if I stayed up that late I would scare off Santa but now that I have grown older my belief has grown and the fear of scaring Santa has melted into the background. I still hope that animal speak, I still hope that they might hold knowledge that we don’t, and I still stay up till midnight hoping to learn the secrets that the animals hold. So Even though I am a world away, even though I won’t see that tree, even though for the first time in 31 years I will be away from my family for Chrismas, you will still find me out in the woods listening closely to the words that the animal may speak and hoping to hear the wisdom in those words.