Posted by
Scribbler on Friday, December 01, 2006 12:43:18 PM
Occasionally , I do oral presentations before library, museum, and retirement groups. My program includes selections from the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Frost, and at this time of the year--A Victorian Christmas. I highlight the years of Queen Victoria's rule and do readings that were popular in her day. I also throw in a few other Christmas poems and stories that the audience will remember from a later period. They nod approvingly at the readings of Charles Dickens and John Greenleaf Whittier. Many are startled when I give them that old sentimental favorite, The Little Match Girl. Most have not heard that since they were children fifty or more years ago. At my reading last night, at a retirement home, I was surprised at the number who had grown up in other parts of the country. I talked to a lady from Virginia, a couple from Texas, and a retired gentleman from California. Their eyes held a misty joy when they thanked me. I knew it wasn't my presence or delivery or voice that had moved them. I was conjuring up the ghost of a Christmas remembered from long ago. It might have been a bleak Christmas from the Depression or one spent in a foxhole during World War II. But for a few moments the loved ones who had made Christmas possible those many years ago were with them . The feelings, the spirit of what Christmas was and is, rang as true and clear as a church bell on a frosty Sunday morning. But morning was over and it was now eventide and they remembered and their expressions spoke of the eternal truth of what Christmas is all about. Were their Christmases truer, better than ours? I doubt it. But Christmas for all generations, for all times ,will always convey the same unique message of love and peace and hope. If it didn't, it wouldn't be Christmas. So, as Tiny Tim would say, "God bless us everyone!"