One Dollar and Eighty-seven Cents.That was all.

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     As we prepare to bid farewell to 2014, with another Christmas warming our hearts and hearths, I want to share the following reflections with you.
     Someone asked me recently how I celebrate Christmas (or I might have brought it up myself). Not sure how or why, but it made me look back at my college days. I fondly remember exchanging gifts with a special person in my life and enjoying a piece of cake in good company. However, this only partially answers the question, at a certain - social - level. At a deeper level, two beautiful stories come to mind, ones that (to me) are inextricably bound up with Christmas.
      The first story is "Christmas Day in the Morning" by Pearl S. Buck, which I first read during my school days. The second is "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry, which I read while I was at college.And both of these authors are my life favorites ever since.
     I keep revisiting them even now. Every Christmas is a call for the annual ritual of reading these two beautiful pieces of nostalgic romance, if I can call them so. It elevates - festoons - my mind, spirit and soul ... and, interestingly, every time I re-read those texts I discover something new in them.
     I read somewhere that the world's scriptures and classic literature all share the three universal themes of Faith, Hope and Love. Both stories I mentioned, each in its own unique and memorable way, fully embody these themes.
     And so my gift to you this Christmas is exactly this: faith, hope and love, the timeless themes throughout human history, and the values that ultimately imbue life with meaning, lighten our load and light up our path on our shared journey.

Merry Christmas!

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