Christmas Baggage

I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, manly, black leather poppa chair in my living room, getting an early start on Santa stuff...looking over some of the notes you wrote to me about Christmas. I read them all, and run some of them in the podcasts and blogs. Then I pack them away for the next year. Some of them make me wonder what happened to the people who sent them.
Christmas is so full of memories. Some people call memories baggage. I guess you can say that memories are baggage, but only if you remember how helpless you felt the last time an airline lost your suitcases. Christmas is good music, good food, and if you're lucky good, happy people around you.
But maybe you're not lucky this year. Even if your Christmas memories hurt, it's coming. Maybe it will help if you remember what Big Louie, the head guy of the Louie Louie Generation always says, "You might as well let a smile be your umbrella, because you're going to get soaked anyway."
Come on...send me your Christmas, Hannakuh, Solstice, or Kwanza memories. Happy or sad. The address is Dick at dick summer dot com.