I am sure that you have noticed when people talk about Christmas they always refer to golden memories, their childhood, "the time that. . ." and in our stories of Christmas we almost always go backward. Carlyle Saskatchewan dresses the town up in Charles Dickens lore and costumes to celebrate "ye ole Christmas"

It just makes sense, for an occasion that is so based in the stories told in the

New Testament that going back in time is what Christmas is always about. The main file I keep each year's Christmas stories in is called "christmastraditions".

Each of my sixty Christmases that I remember are golden moments. Times to savour and recall the wonder, the magic, of those mornings and long winter evenings. One of the reasons that smells play such an important part in Christmas traditions is because it is aromas that seem to be a direct link with our memory system. Be it food, or the smell of

wrapping paper, grandmother's chocolate liquers, or the chilly mixture of cold air and the smell of horse and cutter, those smells are time bombshells.

We have a box with a few old reel to reel tapes that were part of the family's "stuff" from the late fifties and buried on those tapes are at least the sounds of one Christmas morning. We got a movie camera in 1968 and that Christmas is recorded in silent coloured movies and then

there are the pictures, thousands of those treasures that were made to preserve a moment to make its wonder last and last.

The memories, the collective memories and yes, the legends, the "could be" memories, all tell us about the essence of this time of the year. Look over those memories of yours as you make new ones this year, refine in the past what drives you to go through yet another Christmas and consider how you will preserve for future memory references this Christmas and all of its glory, for in time it is the glory of it that will remain. We have enough nasty things to remember so our Christmas memories, the ones we cherish, are the special moments that we will aim to recreate time after time.

Tomorrow let us consider Christmas future.