Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmas time. Charles Dickens
Getting into the Christmas and overall holiday spirit in South Florida is sometimes not easily achieved when you were born and raised in the North East with cold-temperature Christmases, while the outside temperatures here are roughly the same as it is on the Fourth of July, or Halloween, or Easter or Valentines Day. The exception is anytime I walk by real Christmas trees for sale and catch the whiff of cut fresh evergreens. That smell carries me back to assorted Christmastimes, especially those in my youth.
I was the youngest of three children to a blue-collar father and stay-at-home mother. We lived in a two-story duplex in a Philadelphia suburb and we knew all of our neighbors by name on both sides of the entire street. Our Christmas tradition as far back as I can remember consisted of a…
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