It’s Christmas Day. Hurrah! (That’s pronounced Hur-ay, not Hur-ah, by the way. We’re American here, not British.)
But speaking of British, I just finished reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. That would be the complete and unabridged version, which is really quite interesting. And I found a part I’d like to share which I think captures the season for those of us in the military and away from family on this day. Here it is:
Again the Ghost [of Christmas Present] sped on, above the black and heaving sea–on, on–until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch, dark, ghostly figures in their several stations, but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companions of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for one another on that day in the year, and had shared to some extent in its festivities, and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
And to those of you who stand the watch, I salute you (imagine me with a glass raising a toast to you–that’s the idea–like at the Navy Birthday Ball).
And to all of us, yet again from A Christmas Carol, in the words of Tiny Tim: “God bless Us, Every One!”
Merry Christmas
