Merry Christmas to all! Christmas is a little different here in Korea. Take Santa’s helpers for example:
I DID NOT shamelessly steal this image from Nomad, it was a gift! Right, Frank?
Anyway, I have not exactly gotten into the spirit of the season this year. I think it is natural to miss the familar and comfortable surroundings that are home and hearth, and this is my first Christmas overseas. But I’m doing alright.
Last night I rang in the holiday at Grand Ole Opry with my friend Jeff. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, so it was good to get together again. We exchanged multiple beers as gifts and were in high spirits as the clock struck twelve. Nothing like a country bar to chase away the blues.
Well, there are places I’d rather be this morning, there’s no denying that. But there is much that is good in my life and the best gift of all is knowing that I have friends and family who are thinking of me today. Know that I am with you too, if only in my heart.
And what’s Christmas without a carol? Feel free to sing along….
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
You reminded me of my first Christmas away from home waaaay back in 1963. I was a teenaged soldier stationed in a place north of you called Camp Casey. I arrived a week or two before Christmas and that made me one of the FNGs (new guys). New guys, of course, were more than likely to get stuck with any details on Christmas Eve, one of them being guard duty. So there I was, on Christmas Eve, in a guard tower, an M14 cradled in my arms, it was very cold and awfully dark. Raymond Burr had come over and was chatting with the troops at one of the Service Clubs on post. Perry Mason! I do not know if he got publicity for that. Bob Hope usually got all the publicity for his Christmas tours. I did not get to meet Burr that night, and he is gone now, but he still has a place in my heart for doing that. Anyway, there I was shivering (from the cold) and thinking, if the bad guys made a move across the DMZ that night, stealthy bastards that they were, at any given time I could receive a sniper’s bullet through the chest. (No Kevlar vests with plates in those days.) I do not remember feeling particularly frightened, sad, or homesick, but I seem to have erased a lot of my negative recollections of that year. Toward the end of my tour I counted down the days as was the custom. However, I am an “older” man now, and when I look back, it seems like one of the best years of my life. Tonight, Christmas Eve 2005, I am in a warm home in California editing pictures of my grandchildren. I am thinking of other teenagers tonight, in fact, all the American forces in Iraq (Afghanistan too), some away from home for the first time. I only hope that each and every one of them can wind up forty something years from now, mentally and physically intact, at home with their families, surfing the galaxy wide web…or whatever it will be called by then. Merry Christmas to all!
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