Tis the season...

Everyone has a Christmas memory that floats up with good feeling every year. For Missmarketcrash, that feeling has always been looking forward to doing a bit of charity. Bringing in canned goods, making crafts to sell, all the lovely smells of Christmas are consistently haunted by that smell of the elderly pee in the nursing home...

With all the charitable donations the U.S. government seems to be making - to the cars, to citibank, and, now, to GMAC and so on - the spirit of giving continues.

The Queen has just delivered her annual Christmas speech and seems to be on the same tangent as the American Government. Let's push Missmarketcrash's irony aside for a moment and remember...time, clothing, money, even good cheer -- whatever you've a bit extra of...donate a little for charity -the giving will bring you merriment.

A Christmas Moment

Miss Marketcrash went to buy a Christmas tree yesterday.  I had been busy thinking about Darwin and evolution and how I needed to edit yesterday's blog as it was far far too chock-a-block with unfinished ideas weakly fused together when I felt a small tug on my hand from my smallest child.  And then a Christmas moment folded itself into a little greeting card as I peered down into his all-knowing eyes.  Here was joy and optimism and anticipation and all those lovely little things holding hands tightly with me as I dashed across the street in excitement toward the trees.  

A bright-eyed young man appeared out of nowhere and our Christmas Moment continued as he displayed and twirled tree after tree as if they were his dancing partners.  It almost seemed cruel to stop his magnificent performance and request a particular tree.  But then, the magic Christmas Moment jellied into an apologetic offer of humor when we decided we really really liked the very first tree he had shown to us.  The magic tree man grinned and told us he was also an estate agent and was very much used to people seeing everything before they could make up their minds...

And then...Darwin jumped back into my head as I neatly pondered the evolution from Estate Agent to Christmas Tree salesman and at the same time I realized I was no longer holding that perfect little hand of good cheer - that he was well ahead of me, running with glee....