"The Real meaning of Christmas"

This is what the spirit of Christmas is all about......

The little boy's heart sank, there was no train-set again this year, and he had been so good.....crying he ran to his grandparents house, where, between sobs, he told what was troubling him.

Grandpa listened, then sat the little boy on his knee, and bagan his tale.....

Two men, a paraplegic and a man with a terrible lung disease, were confined to a hospital room. Each day, the medical staff would help the man with the lung disease sit up for an hour and, during that time, he would gaze out the window and describe what he saw to his paralyzed roommate whose bed was on the side of the room away from the window.

"He'd describe children running and playing, a father walking with his child or a bluebird in a tree across the way," the old man said. "And his descriptions gave the other man a sense of hope."

One day, the man with the lung disease died. The paralyzed man asked to be moved close to the window and, when the nurses obliged, asked them to help him sit up so he could see out. Again the nurses obliged, but all that could be seen from the window was a wall.

Shocked, the paralyzed man told the nurses about the wonderful things his former roommate had described and about how those descriptions had given him hope. The nurses were a little shook up by this and told the paralyzed man something he didn't know about his roommate.

"He was blind," they said.

"The point is Christmas is largely in your mind," said the old man. "It's how you think, how you dream, that determines how you see things. And how you perceive things, that's your freedom. That's your Christmas."

This story was told to a reporter
visiting a man on Death Row this Christmas
and passed on to me.

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