Christmas means more than material things

I cannot believe it's December, already! This year has absolutely flown by! There are so many things I want this year:

• I want a beautiful wreath for my front door - but I haven't found one yet.
• I want to put up and decorate my lovely Christmas tree - and then not worry about the kids messing with the ornaments.
• I want a clean house - top to bottom - and then a weekly housekeeper to maintain it for me!
• I want to cook a fantastic Christmas dinner - all by myself.
• I don't want to do any laundry.
• I want a car.
• I want a fireplace so I can hang our Christmas stockings from the mantel but will have to make due with placing them on the floor around the Christmas tree.
• I want to dig the large nativity scene out of the storage shed and proudly display them in the front of our house.

But mostly, I want to make this Christmas special for my family; my kids. They deserve to have a wonderful day of joy and to understand the True Spirit of Christmas. There are so many things I want to give them, but, material things aside, as long as they are happy and healthy - I'm happy. The rest really doesn't matter. I heard something this morning that bothered me, though. Apparently there was a bad accident near my office - the wrecked car had wound up blocking both lanes of traffic going one way, and taken out a sign and some other stuff along the way. Aside from the obvious tragedy of this poor person having had a car accident, I was told by someone who was stuck in the jam behind it all that people were trying to get around it by driving up on the median! No one stopped to see how the driver of the car was doing - if he (or she) was even OK! These folks trying to drive by on the side were more focused on where they were going, being late for work, needing that cup of coffee, chatting on their cell phones, or whatever it was that they were focused on, that they forgot about or didn't care about the poor person in the wrecked car! This bugs me - a lot. How can someone be so self-involved that they drive right by an accident without at least stopping to see if the person is injured!? I remember, several years ago, I was on my way to work, having just gotten on to the road that leads me by my beloved lake every morning. The car in front of me was a relatively new, light blue Lincoln Continental (or something similar in size) being driven by an elderly man, with his wife riding in the passenger seat. A deer leaped out in front of them and they hit it - dead on. The deer wound up on the windshield and the Lincoln wound up on the side of the road. It scared me, first of all, because it happened right in front of my eyes - but it also scared me because I didn't know how the occupants of this car fared. I could see, by just having followed them for a couple hundred feet, that they were elderly and I was supremely worried about their physical condition. Forget the deer. I pulled over behind them, jumped out of my car and by the time I got to them, the man driving was getting out. He saw me right away. I asked him if he was OK and if he needed me to call anyone; that I had a cell phone. He told me, shakily, that he and his wife were fine and they, too, had a cell phone and had already called 911. I made certain that they were both really OK, but then, at the old gentleman's prompting, I went on. I was shaken. But I'm sure they were shaken more. It bothers me to no end that people, especially at this time of year, can be so self-focused that they can't or won't stop for someone who's been in an accident. My comment was, "So much for the Christmas Spirit!" Something to think about. TTFN JMS