from our publisher
& editor
What do you remember most about the holidays of your childhood?
For me, it’s the simple things like helping my grandmother open her mail and hang dozens of
Christmas cards around the doorways of her living room. Even today, when the holiday cards
arrive to my own mailbox, I cherish the familiar handwriting of my relatives, delight in the
photos of how our friends’ children have grown, and smile through those detailed and sometimes awkward (which makes them perfect) family newsletters.
I can’t help but wonder what my sons’ holiday memories will be. Will they be as etched in
their mind as clearly as I can recall how my cousins and I would inhale our Christmas dinner
and then beg the grown ups to eat faster so we could open presents? Or how the crisp air and
crunchy leaves felt hiking around our family’s farm until we found the perfect tree? Or the
way my mom never failed to declare each year that it was “the prettiest tree ever”?
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When you think back, you realize it was the people around you who made the holidays special. Not because of a ‘thing’ you got or gave… and certainly not because the floor was vacuumed, the mashed potatoes were perfectly whipped, or nobody spilled cranberry sauce on the
tablecloth.
When my wise friend Lynn Colwell talks about the holidays, she always reminds us, “people