Merry Christmas

The shadow of Christmas

 I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable 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.  ~Charles Dickens

Let this time of year renew and relax you, as you enjoy time with family and friends. 

Merry Christmas and every good wish for the new year.  Let me share one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music, In the Bleak Midwinter.  This piece was based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem. It was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904.