E book 24447_84347377 christmas is coming in 26 days

Christmas is Coming in 26 Days

Preface / Introduction

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Table of Contents
1. How to keep Christmas well in your heart throughout the year
2. The joy and lifelong comfort in a parent's voice. Some thoughts.


How to keep Christmas well in your heart throughout the year
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
"and it was always said of Ebenezer Scrooge, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man
alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim
observed, God bless Us, Every One!"
The words, of course, are from Charles Dickens' masterful "A Christmas Carol" published in 1843, a
present the world gratefully rediscovers each and every year. They remind us that Christmas, to be
Christmas, must be about magic and memories, remembering both those who are with us and
(especially) those who are not.. Christmas this year, as every year, began for me by unpacking my
little electrified tree. It is battered now and bears its many bruises proudly if carefully.
All at once, I give way to memories insistent, vivid, one tumbling over another. The box opens and
recollections of one year of my life after another pour out. First, I remember the day my
grandmother gave me this marvelous present and how she solemnly told me to take good care of it,
as she had done.
I agreed to do so, little knowing the significance or the power of what I promised. Now I know, for
this year I am older than she was when she gave it to me... and I now ponder who, in due course, I
must present this tree to and who will keep the faith of generations with me. You see, I have arrived
at the stage of life when Christmas is far more about who I shall give to... rather than who will give
to me.
It cheers
My little tree (circa 1935), just 16 inches tall, literally bubbles with colorful cheer. It is called a
bubbler because its bulbs not only light up and glow... but one after another they bubble, except
(some days) the one at the very top which, eccentrically,often fails to bubble at all. Moreover, when
one bulb goes out.... they all go out which means a patient review of all. However, I wouldn't have it
any other way. Age means appreciating even flaws, for they, too, are a part of the whole.
Because I am an historian and like many such have a tendency to collect and keep for a lifetime, I
have been designated by my extended family as the "keeper", the one it is safe to leave with the
mementoes we all agree are important, but which no one but me wants to take care of. Once the
bubbler tree is set up, other boxes must be opened... and they can only be opened when there is
sufficient time to pause, remember, reflect, and again and again be seized by their heart-tugging
memories. One cannot rush this process for the memories will not be denied. They are forever
bittersweet... featuring as they do those loved and gone before. Yes, one must have sufficient time
for them for the memories that cascade at this time of the year are always vivid, poignant, rich... with
new meanings that come as I age.
I smile, for instance, at a styrofoam bell given to me (as to all class members) by Mrs. Eigenbraugh,
my third grade teacher. This ornament, a liberty bell, features my teacher in a stately formal pose.
She looks at me as the dedicated prairie teacher she was. The autograph reads simply "Mrs.
Eigenbraugh, 1955."
I am older now than Mrs. Eigenbraugh was then... and I clearly see her at her desk dutifully,
carefully signing each gift in her copperplate hand. She no doubt paid for these herself... and gave
them as a small memento of her and the season... little thinking that I, a half century later, should be
so moved at her gift... or her conscientious generosity. Do teachers give as much today?
Just one left

http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com Copyright Elizabeth English - 2012 4 of 9


I was born in 1947 to young parents who had, in those post war years, few dollars and sky-high
aspirations, with days and energy to spare. Like everyone else in the neighborhood they had a young
child, part of that baby boomer wave. For him, they bought a box of colored glass ornaments which I
broke one by one by getting in my petal powered red car, pushing it backwards across the living
room... then running car into Christmas tree... full speed ahead. No one seemed to mind. We were
young, and we all had time and youth to spend without care.
Now I hold that glass ball in my hand, of faded purple hue. It, along with my father and I, are the
survivors of this tale. And now this glass ornament, once so little valued that we all laughed every
time I, with my running feet and determined glint, scored a direct hit... now this glass, I say, is
precious and deeply valued as a memento of youth, both my parents and my own, and of the
beautiful dark-haired woman whose carefree laughter and love are as clear in this ornament as if it
were a crystal ball. She told me to take good care of this for there could never be another... I have
and I will. And in time I shall ask of another what she asked of me: to remember.... and to take good
care. For I am entitled to that as well., having well and truly kept the promise.
Remember and reconnect
Each year about this time, I set out to reconnect with someone from my past with whom I have lost
touch, the way one does. Sometimes I succeed in this task; sometimes I don't. When I do... I make a
point of writing them a memorable letter... about how important they are to me... and how well and
what I remember. Such letters in a lifetime are rare to write and rarer still to receive. I am pleased to
say they always stimulate a similar letter in response. That letter is always amongst my best
Christmas presents. As such I place it carefully among my other treasured gifts and mementos and
savor them as, each year, I take them out and let memory hold sway. Thus, with the help of my
dearly beloved, I keep Christmas in my heart all year long, like the better, reformed, wiser Ebenezer
Scrooge.
And so I say to you: God bless us everyone and every loving memory of yore. They make us what
we are and remind us, lovingly, of where we have been and the people who have helped us along the
way in so very many ways.
Merry Christmas!



The joy and lifelong comfort in a parent's voice. Some
thoughts.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. It happened when I was deep in a brown study on some suitably recondite
conundrum of cosmic significance. There, walking along the uneven sidewalk that lines the
Common, there right in front of me I saw two lucky people who only had eyes for each other. Their
presence was arresting; taking me immediately out of myself, focusing full attention on them, two
people learning just how exciting and fulfilling togetherness can be.
You're skipping ahead of me now I daresay. You're expecting one young thing entwined with
another, in love perhaps, or making good progress thereto. But if you think this, you'd be wrong,
quite utterly mistaken. For the two people I saw, and could not take my eyes off, were a young
father and his young daughter. He looked to be on the sunny side of thirty; she was three or four.
And a more enraptured couple I did not see that day... nor had I seen for long before. They only had
eyes for each other.
The young father was in the process of enchanting his daughter; he was very much in the middle of
not merely telling her a story... but acting it out. His animals were not just words from his mouth.
They lived! They moved! They entranced! He didn't merely talk of their movements... he moved as
they would in life, going where they meant to go.... and to show her deep and sincere appreciation
for his constant efforts and exertions... she laughed, completely, merrily, with a glee she had already
mastered... and which she spent liberally, recompense for her adored father.
No wonder I couldn't take my eyes off this scene of radiance and sunshine. I could only wish them
both one thing to make what they had perfect... and that was the gift of clear memory.
Unbidden tears.
After a minute or two my way diverged from theirs; they went on without thought or recognition or
acknowledgement that such a one as me even lived. And whether it was because of this thought or
one like it, I felt tears. It's the kind of thing that happens to too many silly old buffers if they've
dined unwisely but too well or dwelt too long on things that might have been... and why they
squandered so many opportunities, because they were certain they'd come again, but didn't.
6 or 7 or so, the softest hands, the most caressing voice.
Then my own memory yanked me as it so often does these days. And I was not pining about
might-have-beens and loves I tossed away without thought, doubt or pangs. Instead I heard a voice I
knew as well as my own, a voice that represented all I valued and had every reason to be grateful
for. Her voice. And this voice didn't just rise from memory. I heard it because she was there with me
again... and everything was there, just as it should be. And just as it all sounded sixty years ago and
more.
"My little love, do you feel a little better? I have something you'll like." And she always did. A
book. A tale carefully considered before being read to me; sometimes one she knew I loved;
sometimes one she was certain I would come to love, because she already did. Thus in her own
soothing hands she would bring me, between covers, pages sometimes not yet cut, the unimaginable
riches of the world, sometimes when I was ill; sometimes to sooth the way to dreamless slumber.
And no matter how much she gave me, there was always more summoned by her practised magic.
But the real magic did not come between covers with uncut pages; nor even with tales of
mesmerizing effect. The supremest spell was the one wrought by her voice and a few deft



movements which denoted care, craft, artistry and above all else, love.
"By the shores of Gitche Gumee."
Given a moment or two, a hint and a clue, I could probably name everything she read to me... not
just because of the lyric power of the authors' words but because of her voice. Its cadence. Its
resonance. Its sonority. Its shear beauty and allure. Each word counted and so she neglected no
word. Each line counted and so she delivered each line. Each paragraph counted... and so not a
single paragraph was overlooked or forgotten. Thus, she rendered one of our favorites; "The Song of
Hiawatha" by my near neighbor on Brattle Street, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published to
universal acclaim in 1855. I can hear her now... see her... she lives on as I hear her reading the
words she loved:
"By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis."
But her magic was by no means exhausted, hardly even begun. For now she told me to close my
eyes, to see the shores of Gitche Gumee, the shining Big-Sea-Water, the wigwam, and most of all
Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon Nokomis. And as she bade, so I did until these were no longer
mere words, but grand vistas, places of consequence and truth. Such was the magic of her voice.
"But there is no joy in Mudville."
One of her favorites, which became one of mine, was "Casey at the Bat", "A Ballad of the Republic
Sung in the Year 1888." It was written by Ernest Thayer and first published in "The San Francisco
Examiner" on June 3, 1888. No voice ever delivered it with greater gusto and the American idiom
than she, perhaps because she was a zealous supporter of her hapless Cubbies, the Chicago Cubs.
Thus, as she spoke she made every captivating gesture:
"Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and
somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But
there is no joy in Mudville -- mighty Casey has struck out."
"And the highwayman came riding."
Over the years, in sickness and in health, her voice unlocked one treasure chest after another...
Thomas Gray, Tennyson, Frost, Sandburg, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Browning, Dylan
Thomas... but this was always one of her favorites, for her dramatic sense worked well with Alfred
Noyes, the great poet of the empire on which the sun never set, ruled by the Great White Queen after
whom my grandmother was named. He published it in 1906, and it made him a world figure.
"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed
upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman
came riding -- Riding -- riding -- The highwayman came riding up to the old inn-door."
And, as was now usual, she closed my eyes and opened my mind's eye to see the ghostly galleon, the
ribbon of moonlight, and the highwayman, "a bunch of lace at his chin", the highwayman who kept
riding, riding, riding. With every word, with every image, she helped make me the man I am today.
Your children deserve as much from you, and as you love them, do so; for this is one certain way to
ensure not just their constant improvement but that you and your voice descend to them and keep
you a forever living presence in their lives.
Envoi.
For the musical accompaniment to this article, I've selected the brilliant suite composed by Nicholai
Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888. It is called "Scheherazade". It's the story of a shrewd woman whose



ability to keep the Sultan amused by telling stories kept her alive. Based on "One Thousand and One
Nights," my mother loved it from its opening bass motif to every evocative note that follows. She
was always happy to acknowledge the talents of other wizards and soothsayers. You'll find it in any
search engine. Go now and play it. Its richness enriches this article... and your life.



Resource
About The Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and
home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and
receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Fr. Lant is a well known
speaker, consultant and author of 18 best-selling business books.
Republished with author's permission by Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com.


E book 24447_84347377 christmas is coming in 26 days

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E book 24447_84347377 christmas is coming in 26 days