Have you found your Christmas spirit yet?

By Mark Hopkins

The Christmas season is here again. How's your Christmas spirit? More to the point, what is it that kindles your Christmas spirit?

I have to admit my Christmas spirit is more difficult to kindle this year than in previous years. I am now at what one might call "superior vintage," and because I am older I am losing friends almost every year. This has been a difficult year for losing friends. With every loss comes a feeling of nostalgia, accompanied by floods of memories of those very close and important relationships, some from as far back as childhood. Much of that is good, but it creates a feeling of loss nevertheless.

Friends and family are what make the world a place of joy and love, and that should be emphasized to us with every Christmas season.

Ruth and I often go looking for our Christmas spirit at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but I haven't been able to squeeze that into our schedule this year. We may get there yet -- we still have three weeks. But, we both agree, we need something to get us revved up and thinking "right." The Dollywood Christmas shows always get us headed in the right direction. Any excuse to go to Dollywood this time of year is good enough for us. We do enjoy that place with all of its young performers, beautiful lights and Christmas music in every corner.

Music is a major factor in any Christmas season. Whether it is "Here Comes Santa Claus," "White Christmas" or "Rudolph," it begins to dominate your psyche. The songs that really close the deal are "Hark the Harold Angels Sing," "Away in a Manger" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." A night of listening to carols by candlelight at one of the churches in the area always seem to be just what the doctor ordered. We love the singing Christmas trees and the annual Christmas parade.

The spirit of Christmas culminates each year with church programs. The singing of little children and church choirs tell us that wonderful story of a babe lying in a manger with shepherds and wise men kneeling at his feet, of families gathering to renew the bond kindled in all of those Christmases past.

I can remember a succession of great-aunts coming to visit my grandmother's house when I was a boy -- Aunt Nora, Aunt Goldie, Aunt Pearl, Aunt Philomena and Aunt Lela. (Don't you just love those names from the 19th Century?) All of these dear ladies are gone, but their faces are still as crystal clear to me as they were a generation ago. Each would arrive with her tray of divinity, fudge, brownies and my favorite of favorites -- chocolate-chip cookies. Is it any wonder that I can close my eyes today and still smell the wonderful kitchen fragrance that filled the house each year at Christmastime? Is it any wonder I still spend several hours a week at the "Y" doing battle with the bulges created by the remnants of all those wonderful memories?

Such memories get us ready for the big day, the day we welcome friends and family to our homes as the Holy family did when the shepherds arrived to "see this miraculous thing," when we open the presents just as the Holy family did 2000 years ago with the visit of the Magi, and when we focus on the blessed Christ child who is, lest we forget, the reason for the season.

So we wish for you a growing Christmas spirit that will stay with you all year round, and a wonderful Christmas season with your family and friends.