Oh, Christmas morn early enough before the busyness of unwrapping gifts and brunch making … The dazzle of the tree lights, church bells chime, and then silence.  My most favorite moment of the year!  And this moment came despite the strangeness of being displaced from my physical home. Home is where the heart is.  And my heart is here.  Poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote these beautiful verses in his poem, Holiday:

The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart,

When the full river of feeling overflows; –

The happy days unclouded to their close;

The sudden joys that out of darkness start

As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart

Swallows singing down each wind that blows!

White as the gleam of receding sail;

White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,

White as the whitest lily on a stream,

These tender memories are; – a Fairy Tale

Of some enchanted land we know not where,

But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

Believe!  Merry Christmas from Dean and Anna!