A VERY HAPPY AND JOYOUS CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

Despite the commercial obsession that now seems to surround Christmas, for most it is still a time to meet up with family and friends and reaffirm love and friendship and to celebrate the birth of a Child.

In ' A Christmas Carol ', Dickens wrote these words for Scrooge's nephew :

"I am sure I have always found Christmas a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable , pleasant time; the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

So, Happy Christmas to all my 'fellow passengers' to the grave!