My Christmas Stocking Stuffer
Christmas. What does it mean to most people? If you asked, I think folks would say that the three most important things about Christmas are: family, family, and family. And so it was that late on night of December 22nd I was sitting alone by the fire reading a novel. It wasn’t the novel that kept me up; it was some vague expectation – no, hope – that my brother Ben would arrive in time for Christmas. A heavy snowstorm had closed the airports and shut many of the roads, so my parents were beginning to lose hope that Ben could make it home from college and had gone to bed. For several days I had listened to their “I told you so’s”, that “Ben should have stayed home, gone to the local college.” My …