Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and the Christmas season has officially begun, it is time to start working on that Christmas card mailing list. Every year, I get this big idea to mail Christmas cards to anybody and everybody, but it hasn’t happened yet.

I have a first cousin who mails everyone in the family her annual “Christmas letter” with her Christmas card. Each year, my cousin goes into great and morbid detail about every football game played, every social function attended, every expensive trip and wonderful vacation taken, and on and on about how well her children are doing in college, how wonderful her husband is, how much money he made during the past year—you get the picture.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I may sound jealous of my cousin, but actually, I’m not. I’m almost positive that Samson, my 21-pound tomcat, and I will take that Alaskan cruise sooner or later.

And, every year, I say to myself that I’ll send out a “Christmas letter” to all of my family members and friends and let them know each and every thing that I did during the past twelve months. Let’s see…I think it will sound something like this:

“Merry Christmas to everyone! This past year has flown by, and here we are staring into 2009 already! I have had a very busy year, and I’d like to share it with you.

Well, for starters, I worked. And then I worked some more. (For those of you who may not know, I am the editor of the newspaper.) And then I came home and slept for a little while and got back up the next day and worked some more. Oh, wait—there was my stay in Crenshaw Community Hospital last March when I nearly passed out at work in front of my computer only to come to my senses in a hospital bed, realizing that black socks and a hospital gown did not make a presentable fashion statement.

And then there was the time I came home and found a meatball stuck under my entertainment center, even though Samson swears he had nothing to do with it. Oh, and I went back to work the next day….”

“And you should know about the sweet old gentleman who waves to me from his bench every morning as I get out of my car at The Journal office…and the fact that Mr. James Morgan comes in every single day and says, “I don’t hear no presses running!” to Mr. Alvin Bland as he works in the back of the building—my day would not be complete if I couldn’t see the two of them working together on some project, all the while coming up with solutions to all the world’s problems.

Or how Mrs. Cletha Norman saw her grandson lead a Sacred Harp song for the first time at Darien Church back in October, and I got to witness it….plus the fact that Ruth Bayman got up and led a song with me that same day….

Or how I stood in line at the funeral home with so many others to say goodbye to a precious friend, Janet Leigh Nichols, earlier this year and how I still miss her…or hearing my great-niece, Ashley, say “Aunt Gina” for the first time this year…or the day I ran into a former student of mine who is working on her B.S. degree at Troy to become a teacher, because “I want to be a teacher just like you…”

Come to think of it, it was a pretty memorable year after all.