Happy Holidays

I endeavour in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it!

That, of course, was the original preface to Charle's Dickens A Christmas Carol. For everyone out there who celebrates Christmas in any fashion: Merry Christmas. For those who don't: Season's Greetings and well wishes for a great year. Dickens, through Scrooge's nephew, expressed what is good about Christmas long ago.

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say… Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I ahve always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys

I wish you all the best, whatever you believe, whatever you do. Be well, enjoy your friends and family and life itself.

As caught up as I am in the world of technology most of the day, it really is nice to kick back with a good old-fashioned book periodically, and Dickens' books are all good. I've been reading A Christmas Carol to my oldest daugher lately and enjoying it immensely so myself yet again.