Feed the world

Now that we've traumatized our child with a compulsory visit to a large bearded stranger in a red felt leisure suit, I guess the Christmas season is officially upon us.

I heard the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the first time this year in the car this morning. There's something about that song that takes me back to childhood and the first time I got some inkling of suffering in the world.

Never mind that the famine was engineered by a murderous Ethiopian government, made worse by U.S. policies aimed at strangling the Marxist regime, and that of course they knew it was Christmas --- Ethiopia was a Christian nation hundreds of years before parts of Europe were. The song still moves me.

It's kind of a time capsule, and I bet there aren't a lot of people in the much-hyped and so-called slacker generation who don't feel a little twinge of something when they hear the song. At least the first time they hear it each season. By time 50, it ranks up there with that staple of Christmas store tapes, "Christmas Wrapping."

Anyway, it's a catchy song and a sentiment that needs attention all year, not just between Thanksgiving and Boxing Day [shameless bid to appeal to the one Canadian reader I have].

Tonight is the Christmas tree lighting at our church, so if we can keep Samson up past his bedtime without turning into a bear and keep him warm enough to stand outside for a bit [we are scheduled for light snow this weekend], it should be really nice.

We'll go and get our tree tomorrow, and I can only imagine what decorating it will be like. Last year, I had him on my shoulder, sleeping, as I put the star atop the tree. This year will probably not work like that...