I’ve been told that if you take Christmas into your heart, you’ll get to keep it forever. Nice.

When I was seven I got a bike for Christmas and man did I take it into my heart.  And I showed my utter gratitude for that bike by riding it deep into a mass of tumbleweeds to see if I could break through to the other side. I couldn’t.

I had an amazing childhood. My parents were pretty weary after years of ‘socially taming’ my older brother, so they kind of let me roam the neighborhood riding my bike and building forts in the sun-baked dirt of Tucson. I wasn’t exactly the kid with the halo, but my brother liked to push the envelope shall we say.  A trait that actually served him well when he became an air force fighter pilot years later.

When I was about five years old,  I remember looking at a children’s Christmas book that had an illustration on the cover of the Wise Men looking up at the star of Bethlehem.  Something kind of shifted in that little boy’s consciousness. I knew I really liked the star, but it seemed like it was touching me in some way.  And now that that little boy is seventy, I’m still touched by that star.  I guess I took it into my heart.  As I remember it, the Traveler once said that if you took Bethlehem into your heart you could take it wherever you went.

My bike sure took me to a lot of places both real and imaginary. When I zipped down a dirt path at ‘breakneck’ speed my heart soared.

Christmas to me has its own soaring heart built in.  And so my wish for claiming Christmas to be in my heart is to send all that magnificent loving to you.

May the Star of Bethlehem settle deep within your heart so you can keep it forever.

God Bless,
Dave