Year after year; Christmas is the same, only different:
Once we caroled from an open sleigh; now we rehearse our joyful noises in a Volkswagen bus.
Once we ventured into the woods to select our Christmas tree; now we run breathlessly to the perfect spruce at the Optimist Club lot down the street.
Once our families, when separated, could come together only in spirit; now we fly miles in minutes to share the season side by side.
Yes, times have changed, but they are our times, and we happily rise to meet them. Can our forebears have derived more joy from roasting chestnuts over their fires than we get from the same? Can their stockings have been stuffed with more cherished surprises than our own? Can their childrens eyes have been more sparkling or their cheeks rosier? Can their generous spirits have been larger? We think not.
Christmas magic transcends Christmas nostalgia; from year to year; generation to generation, the season remains what it has always been a time for ornamenting our lives with red and green, gold and silver, lights both soft and bright, songs and feasting and, above all, love; a time both for fondly choosing material expressions of that love and sharing with everyone our certain ineffable joy in giving our all.
It is our joy this December to celebrate Christmas by giving you treasures old and new alike. We hope to lead you from the delicate creche lovingly arranged around the Metropolitan Museum of Arts annual giant tree to the splendiferous pleasures of holiday food and drink; from the making of serendipitous Christmas wreaths to the attendance at performances of the Nutcracker Suite and A Christmas Carol across the country; from a novelists invention of a new Christmas fable to a minister’s thoughtful consideration of the joys of Christmas; from the winter birds in your backyard to the warmest brandies for your snifters.
We hope to return you to thoughts of Christmas, with scores of volumes for the readers and art lovers on our reading list. Most important, we do not forget the meaning of Christmas, refusing to let it be only a secular influence in our lives; joy is joy, and giving is giving, and the spirit of Christmas, embracing all, can leave no one behind.