A week and a day to go before Christmas. I must say, in my salad days, Christmas was a time of magic and delight. I can distinctly recall, as a third grade wonderkid, sitting with a smallish tree on my desk at school reminiscant of the one seen on Charlie Brown's show the night before. Getting and receiving gifts. The first Christmas I ever went out with my own money and buying things for my mother and sisters from a little gift store in town. The lady at the store who treated me so kindly and nearly patted me on the head in her delight at my patronage.

The many, many years of following up a marraige proposal at Christmas, along with the requisite ring, by purchasing some form of jewelry in each of the following years for my wife. After 21 such years, she is relatively well bedecked.

I don't know when or where the Christmas season became just another day trip. It did, and I don't know quite how. I'm not sure if it was the commercializtion of it or the number of people complaining about said commercialization (generally when they ran into heavy traffic coming out of the mall with a load of highly publicized must-haves on Dec. 23rd).

I'd probably like to think that every day can be Chirstmas if you choose to turn your head to the same rhythms that spark all sorts of best behavior on that particular day in December.

And maybe that's why it has been lessened in importance to me over the years. No harm meant, no sadness. It just has less of an appeal when the general thinking is to legislate it into a day of bonding when in fact, every day could be like that.

Can you imagine? Every single day.

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