The song I'll be Home for Christmas I'm sure conjures up different things for people.  As I thought about this yesterday, I begin to explore it in a lttle different way. 

The beautiful  song by Walter Kent, Kim Gannon, and Buck Ram says, "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love more than I usually do.  And although I know it's a long road back I promise you...I'll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams". 

I always thought only of dreaming of going home if you had moved away or were living in another town and traveling back to see your parents and or other loved ones. Or just the family gathering that always occurred with my mom and dad with the rest of the extended family.  That ended in my family basically after my mom and dad were gone. 

But to me it is going back to all the Christmas's you've known in the past.  That includes all the special memories that you have in your head of all kinds of different events, people and places that have shaped your life and left such treasured memories. 

I think of the first time I got a watch for Christmas, that  bicycle, that coke truck,or a stereo, the cowboy outfit with the guns.  But the things that stand out above and beyond any gifts that I might have received in my lifetime are the special people and events  that have crossed my path. 

It was my mom baking her cakes every year and being excited about Christmas and being with her family and it was my dad smoking that cigar.  It was both of them being very poor but trying so hard to buy a few gifts for us kids.

Other Christmas's  that really stand out were the special dating relationships.  Most of these invoved someone that I felt at the time I was in love with.

But to conjure up any of these special memories at least for me, I need to be by myself in a setting that I like and having some Christmas music playing helps set the stage.

This did happen to me yesterday.  I was in my workshop, actually cleaning the place up a bit.  It was cold, the skys were gray and I was feeling a bit melancholy and I suddenly decided to turn on the radio and listen to Christmas music.  Bingo, I was soon transported back in time, to different years, and special places and people that have had profound impacts on my life.  I was actually visiting old friends and I must say, it did me good. The words to a song sums it up pretty good...It could only do me good to see your face at my door.  That's how I feel about my treasured Christmas memories.  To see some of those special people that are no longer here, yeah it would only do me good.

Merry Christmas