Home for Christmas...

As far as I'm concerned there really only needs to be one guy singing Christmas carols every year...Bing Crosby. He sang a whole lot of other stuff in his illustrious career, but seems to get remembered these days primarily as the guy who sings White Christmas better than anybody, past or present, on the planet. The great debate every year at our house is which is better, "Holiday Inn" or "White Christmas" the two Bing Crosby Christmas movies released several years apart that prominently feature the song White Christmas. I prefer "Holiday Inn" because it was chronologically first, but my girls like "White Christmas" better because Fred Astaire is really mean in "Holiday Inn". By the way, I just reconsidered and the only other Christmas album that should be allowed is the "John Denver and the Muppets" Christmas album. I'm not kidding...it is brilliant in every way! Animal rocks!

Anyway, my other favorite Christmas song to hear Bing sing is another World War II era song entitled, "I'll be Home for Christmas". It, of course, has been covered many, many times since Bing, but there is something about hearing that smooth, rolling, mellow, baritone voice promising that whatever it takes, he'll not let anything stand In the way of being with the ones he loves at home for Christmas. My mom and dad lived in the same house on Myrtlewood Street in Baton Rouge for almost thirty years. It was the place I came back to when I was in college and then after I was married with my own family. A number of years ago my parents moved to the woods in Mississippi and my mom still lives there presently, even though my dad passed away 4 years ago. I go there to see her, but it's not really like going "home". My girls are 25, 22, and 21 and have been off at college and across the country for the last several years. Because of traveling to different churches to minister and other financial reasons in recent years, they don't have a childhood homestead to come back to either. Almost 2 years ago I decided to downsize and leave the suburbs to move into the city to be nearer to the population center of Austin as well as nearer the warehouse. I moved into a two bedroom,one bath duplex that Brian and Lorraine generously rent to me for much less than it is worth, but as many who have done this will agree, moving from a four-bedroom house and all of the crap you buy to fill it up to a smaller place is an adjustment... a very healthy one, but an adjustment nonetheless. When it is just Cleveland and I we have more room than we need, but when all three girls are home as they have been for the holidays, it becomes very interesting. It still is no problem because I know that the space we are in is many, many times larger than the homes and shelters that the majority of the world live in, so, I am grateful on many levels. I guess what I am saying is that, for me, this Christmas I am reminded again that Bing had it right...I won't always have the gift of either being home or having my family all in one place at every holiday. As the years pass we lose family members to death and life. I pray daily for my friends Scott and Sarah who spend this Christmas without little Thomas who would have been enjoying his third Christmas had not cancer stolen him away last August. My dad was killed in an automobile accident in December of '04 and he loved family all of the time, but especially having as many of them around as possible at Christmas...mainly the kids who loved to argue with him about whether he was a "sweet-tater" or an "agi-tater".

So...I'm humming along with Bing...and enjoying my amazing daughters, and remembering not to take a minute of it for granted. And go rent "Holiday Inn"...Bing's heirs will thank you.

Pling...Pling...

dg