I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who wants everything at Christmas to be perfect. You know what I mean: everything perfectly decorated, the perfect gift chosen for everyone, and above all that everyone close to you is where they should be. If you are like that, my guess is that for the second year in a row, you haven’t gotten your Christmas wish. I know I haven’t. We’re here tonight well aware that as humans we’re just not as in charge as we would like to be. For all of us it’s a source of frustration, for other it’s a source of real loss. The world turns…

It’s hard to celebrate Christmas without being flooded with memories. I know every Christmas I can’t help but be brought back to Christmas the way it was when I was a kid back in Indiana, going to a big Christmas Eve party in a packed little house with my six Croatian aunts and five Croatian uncles and dozens of others, a house overloaded with food and presents and desserts. My Uncle Dan was a wiry little man, but every year at the climax of the evening he’d put on a faded and ratty Santa Claus suit, with no padding at all — really I should just summarize it by saying…