This year's Christmas post includes its usual online Christmas card (top photo), this year's favourite Christmas song, other online cards received, and some thoughts.
LOST. AND FOUND.
Lost. And found. This theme keeps going through my head like a toy train circling the base of a Christmas tree. It first occurred to me while I was looking at some models I scratchbuilt about four decades ago. My patience, visual acuity and manual dexterity impressed me. I have lost a measure of the first two, and they influence what remains of the third.
Our modern mentality focuses much energy on loss, grievance and wanting more. Why don't we instead turn our perspective to what new understanding, learning or even wisdom we may have found? And what we continue to encounter each day?
The mellow and mellifluous The Christmas Waltz, this link leading to a Marc Martel/Amy Grant collaboration is my choice for favourite Christmas song this year. Of course, in the carol category, O Come All Ye Faithful remains my perennial favourite with its eternal entreaty O Come Let Us Adore Him not only inviting, but in a way also compelling us toward the very essence of Christmas.
In a way, those famous Wise Men were lost, needing a star to lead them to Bethlehem. The shepherds travelled a shorter distance, but a host of angels were required for them to get them to their destination. Becoming a grandfather for the third time, those galactic visions were positively phantasmagoric compared to the tiny, humble scene and a newborn baby they found, enacted in that humble, lamp-lit stable. And there's that theme again!
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| Christmas on the Hanley Spur |
CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
Lance Gleich: 
Lisa Larson's CN in Alberta: 
A certain major Markham model manufacturer:
Ian Stronach:
Mike Robin - Ontario Northland at Cochrane:
The prolific Bob Boudreau:
George's Trains:
Jim Parker's daily email photo digest:
Emmerson Case at Union Station:
Bernard Kempinski:
Unfortunately, the first greeting is from The Trackside Photographer's Edd Fuller. Posted over a Merry Christmas and an email message, Edd is retiring from the site, and no new posts will follow after year's end: 
Here's how my online Chritmas card started out this year:
A very Merry Christmas to Trackside Treasure readers, commenters, contributors and blog partners!
--Eric
Merry Christmas Eric. Thank you for the wise words. My outlook on life has really changed in the last five years. A wise man reminded me that, I could flick on a switch, magically get water out of a faucet, turn a dial and heat my home and not think to be thankful for these absolute luxuries. Or maybe the fact that I am at a computer thinking about trains and talking to fellow rail friends all over the world. There are blessings everywhere in my life that many in this world would love to enjoy. We just need to focus our minds on these gifts and remind ourselves to be thankful for them.
ReplyDeleteWe are definitely 'sharing the same brain'! Merry Christmas to you and your family from our house!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment,
Eric