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- 2 EDITOR'S THANKS I would once again like to thank four people who have quietly but most efficiently helped me in getting the Newsletter "on the road" every month during 1994: Lillian Chow who is always so helpful, does a super job of putting it all in print, then makes 100- 150 copies (not to mention the same for the minutes of the previous monthly meetings taken, with our appreciation by Jack Mounce); the next "link" in the chain is Marguerite Cassetta who, all alone, folds and stuffs all this into envelopes and adds an address label on each one; finally two staff members - Devona Miller (mainly) and Nina Pemberton (as back-up) who put it all through the postal meter and get it mailed to all the members. My sincere thanks to each and every one of them. "CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR" ... (IS ENOUGH) Everybody deplores the commercialization of Christmas. At least that is something. How much worse would it be if this commercialization was simply not noticed. As it is, most people sense that the decline of the religious dimension of Christmas is a sad, even tragic, loss. They look back with longing to a time when the churches and cathedrals were more central to the celebration of Christmas than the shops ... so long as that yearning is there, pessimists are wrong to say that materialism has completely triumphed. Nor should the pessimists be allowed to get away with a description of contemporary Christmas that overlooks the marvelous amount of human love and kindness that still marks the festival. It is not just like any other national holiday. The hungry are fed; the lonely are visited; families do come together in a spirit of goodwill. If charity lies at the heart of Christianity, as the Gospels tell us, then it is not at all true to say that Christmas has been secularized out of all recognition. Stern moralists understandably find much about the modern Christmas deeply depressing - the frantic shopping, the drunken driving, the gross over-indulgence. All that is very public. Much less obvious are all the countless acts of generosity which take place behind the scenes, in the privacy of millions of homes. If Christ were to return, He would find much to disgust Him about the modem Christmas. But He might also find that the message He came on earth to spread was still widely heeded in the home, if not always in the churches. Christmas is a festival of hope and renewal, of goodwill and good cheer; of, in a word, optimism. In that Christmas spirit we refuse to countenance the gloomy view that the festival is now given over to greed and materialism. These elements certainly figure far too prominently. But just as prominent are all the condemnations of them. Given all the new temptations created by Western mass consumption economics, the wonder should not be that so little of the old spirit of Christmas remains, as that so much does. And most people would dearly love there to be more. Therein lies the ground for Christian hope. (From "In Search of the Ground for Hope"" Sunday Telegraph, December, 1985) REMEMBER? * Feeding apples to the huge Belgian horses that once used to haul garbage wagons. * Saturday morning double features at the movie house with the Cisco Kid and the continuing serial which always left you waiting until next week as the train was about to mow down the nice lady. * Wanting only one thing for Christmas - a cap gun. * Hopping to school chanting that old rhyme "Step on a crack, break your mother's back." * Shopping coupons for candy, sugar, eggs and gasoline. * Finding a coin in the Christmas cake (or pudding). *lnkwells in the classroom desk. * Next day mail service. .../3