Colin F. Jones

~ Once Upon a Time ~
CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

When I was a kid in England, Christmas was very special. We use to tromp through the snow on Sundays to church, the bells in the tower tolling all over the shire. The German bombing did not deter us, not that there was any bombing in our area. We went from door to door singing Christmas Carols collecting a few pence to buy presents. Holly grew everywhere, even in the church yard where the stone church with its belfries and single tower with a weather cock on top, dating from Saxon times, stood fairytale like in the whiteness. The big trees where the Rooks nested were leafless, the birds long gone to distant lands, would return next year, the exact numbers returning as those that had left. There was always a Robin Red Breast on the sill at our front window, or dancing around our white lawn enclosed by the green privet hedge – all so very different to later life; the bitterness, loneliness, poverty and prejudice, the hot, hot days, unlike the winter of my childhood.

Christmas always takes me back, and leaves me wondering what I might have become had I been allowed a better life.

©Copyright December 8, 2003 by Colin F. Jones