Last Wednesday it was August 25 exactly four months before Christmas ( 116 days before Christmas www.xmasclock.com and it’s only a matter of time, way, way, before Halloween that we will be made known of that fact; in fact, depending on where you shop there may be some remnants of that right now.

YES, I AM THAT GUY Who normally tries to celebrate Christmas the 25th of every month and really, every day. I will be brutally honest with you, I feel most of the time even though I am that guy, the Christmas guy; a few years ago my coworkers gave me a Christmas tree for my birthday that said MERRY CHUCKMAS~~because I’m THAT guy

Yes, I took this video on a very windy March afternoon just three months after Christmas and so many months before we celebrate again. It was a reminder a very cold, chilly, and dismal reminder that every BEGINNING already has an ending tucked not so deeply inside of us that not so gently reminds us and everything around us that we don’t last forever. . . Unless something much deeper and much greater than a fading memory or a photographed moment could ever promise:    OUR LOVE

Our love often visits that which is dead and those who have died to remind us and always them that’s not a plot of earth that we commemorate or place them, but deep within our hearts that they continue to live as they always have, as they always do, and as they always will

Where do Christmas decorations go to die?  Sometimes you don’t have to look very far to find the answer and then to realize that the answer is not an answer at all but a small dusty-not-so-shiny-glimmer of hope that reminds us they haven’t died at all and never do. . .

We are the proof of that or we are not.     .     .

What SAY/SHOW you. . . ?

Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Do you know what’s going to happen in 116 days.          .          .
Seriously,
why wait.            .             .
WHY BURY
WHAT NEVER DIES.   .   .   ?

It’s that I adore Christmas.          .          .

Every year

Every Season

Every Month

Every Week

Every Day

Every Minute

Every Second

OF   IT.          .          .

W           H             Y ?

Here’s   a   little   Explanation:

When   A N O T H E R

says something

better than you  could ever

u  t  t  e  r

w r i t e

r e c i t e.        .        .

Give’em the Stage

and the Microphone

and most definitely,

T H E    S P O T L I G H T

and   don’t   shut   up

so   much   as   really

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This Henry van Dyke story is featured in our collection of Christmas Stories. and Short-Short Stories to read when you have five minutes to spare. You might enjoy his other works, The Other Wise Man and The First Christmas Tree

It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.

But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellow-men are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world–stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death–and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

And if you keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone.      

L                 I                S                T                E                N :