I'm retired, so working on holidays really doesn't bother me. My family and I celebrated Christmas early this year, on Friday. It might be difficult for some people, but my family is accommodating, so it works for us.

Christmas is about giving, the holidays and family, and I could just imagine as a young person how he must have felt when that happened. We just want to try and give him something back, to leave him with a good feeling as he heads home to Calgary.

"At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

When purchasing gifts becomes the focal point of the season, we lose focus on what's truly important.

Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.