Merry Christmas to All!

Secondhand Smoke and Smokette have put up the Christmas lights and trimmed the tree. We look forward to a time of refreshment and the hope of the season with family and friends.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, please accept my most heartfelt best wishes for a blessed and merry holiday to you and yours. For those who do not celebrate Christmas, please accept my most heartfelt best wishes to you and yours. And whether we celebrate the "reason for the season" or not, at least we can all agree that Scrooge found the key to the secret of life:

"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

"He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"