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Greetings and blessings in this Christmas Season! Most of us since childhood can perhaps still recite this: “The Night Before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hope that St. Nick would soon be there.” Of course, it sounds good but it’s essential to be familiar and know the true and miraculous story of our Saviour’s birth as told in Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 2:1-7. Also this biblical story of Jesus’ birth is told through Christmas hymns and carols such as the “Silent Night! Holy Night!” in the “O Little Town of Bethlehem” where “Christ the Saviour was born” and laid “Away in A Manger.” This divine story and these hymns/songs bring such “Joy to the world,” because our Saviour is born.

With the Christmas and New Year holidays wreaking havoc on deadlines, and not knowing when this newspaper might get in your hands, I’m being careful and writing this column a bit early. As we get older, it seems as though the days pass quicker than ever. It feels like just a little while ago we were celebrating Christmas 2024, now Christmas 2025 is upon us or might have already passed, and reassured that Christmas 2026 will here before we know it. Personally I am glad to have made it to Christmas 2025, and all of you should be as well. Hopefully I will still be here to see Christmas 2026, and also hope all of you will be.

Last Friday, Dec. 12, I had surgery to remove two aneurysms from my abdomen. Sounds bad, looks bad after surgery, but things couldn’t have gone any better. I’m a firm believer that it was the prayers raised for me by so many people that made it as easy as it was. Two days in the hospital and I was released. Of course, there is going to be a kind of lengthy recovery period, but I know God’s got this. Let me tell you how faith and prayer work. God was at work before I even had the surgery. Let me explain. If those aneurysms had ruptured, death would have been fast and quick. I’ve known for a long time I had a thoracic aneurysm and have dealt with it. But did not know about the others until God put me in the hospital over a year ago. To explain, most aneurysms are found by accident because there are no symptoms. That was the case with the ones in my abdomen.

I won’t presume to speak for anyone other than myself, but I will be exquisitely happy to see 2025 in the rear-view mirror of life. Of my years on this planet, it has to rank as one of the worst. During the course of my 67 years, I’ve had some bad years. I’ve also had some very, very good ones: There’s 1958, for instance, the year I was born. That has to rate as a good year, at least from my perspective. I would say 1968 was a good year – that was the year I got to visit the WGN-TV studios in Chicago and attend the Bozo’s Circus show with my school class. Later that year I had the opportunity to meet my boyhood idol, television weatherman Harry Volkman.  Mr. Volkman came to speak at our school (at my invitation) and I got my picture in the local neighborhood newspaper with him, on the front page no less.

When you see this column, it will be time to begin waving goodbye to 2025. I hope your Christmas was a wonderful one, and that you are planning a happy (but very safe) celebration for the incoming new year. Me?  I’m going to bed early.  I’m too old for all that celebrating stuff. Next time we meet, the calendar will say it’s 2026 … for all of us, though, it’s always trivia time.  Here’s the last column of the year, and I hope you like it! Happy New Year, everybody!

Friday, Dec. 5 is a day that three seniors from Upson Lee High School in Thomaston, including Ms. Aisha Derico, granddaughter of life-long Talbot County residents, John and Carolyn Lamar of Talbotton, will never forget. Georgia Tech Admissions officer, Christina Scott, traveled to Thomaston to personally deliver the news that three young ladies that had applied for early admission to Georgia Tech had all been accepted.