Figure 1 – Silver Christmas Balls. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I have gone in search of Christmas and I have brought my Iphone along to record the moment. It is an odd year in America and has been since the election. There is a glum resignation that has proven grinchlike and the malls and houses just don’t seem decorated in the usual optimistic way. I will except from that the hot air figures that people place on their lawns: the santas, the snowmen, the nativity scenes. I mean a blow-up baby Jesus is just the thing to ring in the season.

But I decided to wear a positive attitude and see where Christmas lay hidden this year. I smirked as I passed a store with a tee-shirt saying “I’m grumpy today and only speaking to my pets.” That was just as i felt and I thought of my cat who had greeted me this morning with a meow, a kiss on the nose, and a request for an ear rub. There was a little boy with his father, both all dressed up. They were headed to have breakfast with Santa. Many years ago my father and I encountered Santa at the Automat. All of this points to the obvious fact that “Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus,” I have seen him at the mall.

“and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!“

Yeah, Yeah! Hmm, I am not there yet! But I did find and delight in the little silver balls on a silver Christmas tree of Figure 1. I like the IPhone for its ability to get in really close, and it is an important point that you have to get in close in photography and in life to avoid the distraction of unrelated background. As with all things, I went to see if Christmas can be found, or at least, is explained somewhere on the internet. There I found this from humorist Dave Barry, which seems very much to leave Dickens to the side and gets very much to the point,

“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!”