If you are like me, you would never think some things could change. When you were a child did you see the world around you and really... never expect it to change?   No matter who we are we all look back and think, "I never expected the world to change." Not like it has.

I recall playing in the creek... alone.  Sometimes with friends, or just plain exploring the woods for hours behind my home. I recall walking two miles to the shopping center with friends at the age of ten.  I remember my parents leaving me and  second grade date at the movie theater to see Robin Hood.   I remember Christmas.  I remember how the family would sit at the television for Christmas Specials and that familiar saying that really sparked excitement in me... "The regularly scheduled program has been cancelled tonight so that we may bring you the following special presentation."  I recall my mother baking cookies, it seemed like an endless supply too.  In short, the world and Christmas seemed so much more innocent.

Like everything else in our world, Christmas has changed.   Sure there are movies that offer up what are supposed to be typical families in New England settings with snow on the ground and fires lit in the fire place all the time.   But even those movies are now filled with not just quirky flawed Characters but what at one time would have been thought impossible, outrageous people.  Intolerable.   Even the stories are sad.  Last year a movie about scores of children from divorced families being trapped in an airport was a comedy.  Life wasn't always this way.

As I grew up I saw Christmas change.    I recall when the biggest problem anyone had with Christmas was the message, "Remember folks, Christ is the ...   more »