Everybody needs a place to call home, especially this time of year.
Society has become far more transient, with much more in the way of opportunity and new climes as the decades pass. The world truly is one’s oyster now.
Some will have moved away for school and settled there. Others yet will accept positions far from home to advance their career. It wasn’t that long ago that a surge of easterners headed west to the oil patch in search of work. They may have left home, but never lost their culture.
This time of year, and the special day that Christmas is, when everything is shut down, imaginations can run wild, often including memories of younger days.
Regardless of current circumstance we believe many memories will include home – whether the place where people grew up, or the actual house in which they lived.
Many will think about the great feasts that tend to go with Christmas – the smells and tastes that went with family occasions. Others may have a pastime, whether it be walking off sweets or enjoying fresh air on a country path. Some yet will recall church recitals and traditions. Memories can be a beautiful thing.
For some of our readers this will be a first Christmas without a loved one, which makes memories of the past even more special. To have known love is one of the greatest gifts of all and we encourage family and friends to help those in need of a hug this season.
Still yet, there will be those who by virtue of work or circumstance will not be home this Christmas. Yearning for home, they may be uneasy, wishing for connections to their hometown and family. We need to think of those who suffer melancholy this holiday.
That notion came to mind reading this week’s Thorning Revisited column, in which Steve chronicled the Christmas of 1943.
Along with the historical context of rationing while Canada was at war, he noted the desire of service people to receive a copy of their local newspaper for Christmas. Certainly, other options exist today to keep up with “home,” but back then this was the best connection with the towns these men and women fought to save.
Home means something and we hope people find comfort with good memories of Christmases past and with new memories to be enjoyed later. On behalf of our staff, Merry Christmas.
