From a Who down in "Whoknew?" ville...

Strange is the sensation when you move beyond Thanksgiving and are immediately launched headlong (like it or not) into the big Red, White & Blue shopping mall that is the United States in December...certainly even more so when you've spent the past several "Seasons" away from it.

Being back home this year, this first Holiday Season with Scout (outside of Wendy's womb) has been and is the real Christmas treat.

Beyond the presents of Playstations and gifts of gold (perhaps, Wendychka)...this Christmas just means so much more. And before I am accused of Hallmark sentimentality, please let me explain.

Yeah, I know he's not even a year old yet and December doesn't hold the magic and wonder it did for us as children...yet. But it will! And that promise of what's to come with him, of what he will be, of what we will be, and of what this time will be...that has filled me with more Christmas spirit than this heart (one that can too often be two sizes too small) has ever known.

You see, when his gaze is held by that tree, it's more than just the twinkling of those lights and the shine of a silver star...there deep down inside him (past the bananas he had for lunch and the burp he's building from them) THAT is where Christmas lives. Christmas is for him. Just as this holiday is for every child out there. Whether they've been naughty or nice or whether they're Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jew...it just doesn't matter. The idea of this particular time of year transcends all that noise we're deafened by for the other 11 months.

Make no mistake, my friends...this gift that we're given each and every year is not only for them, it's from them.

As much as I loved Christmas as a kid, I never knew what it really meant. Beyond the story of the baby in the manger and the Six Million Dollar Man with the Kung Fu grip. Even beyond Nintendo and the 'Night Before Christmas'. Christmas is hope. Pure, unadultered, unashamed make this world a better place, right in your face HOPE. The hope that lives within my boy, the hope of the future that lies before him,and the hope of all the love we share as a family here in the land of the credit card Christmas.

This celebration is of a year that has forever changed not only my life, but my wife's as well. Our Christmas came quite early this year...on Easter Sunday actually. Everything else is just ornamentation, like so much tinsel on the tree.

Feliz Navidad and Veseloho Vam Rizdva!

Merry Christmas...and thank you both. From the bottom of my three-size swollen heart.

i saw mommy kissing santa claus.