By Marie-Louise Meyers

Whatever holiday you celebrate, no matter how it ranks in importance on your calendar, take time to appraise and appreciate the roof over your head, meals on the table, a job, your able-bodied self when there are too many homeless, too many sick or crippled without help, too many without your wisdom or where-with-all to celebrate.

Be nice and break the ice with new neighbors on your block, read to someone who can’t see, capture the rapture of children this holiday tide, start by caroling throughout the neighborhood with somebody new at your side.  

Are you blue capture the brilliance of Longwood, if you need a new lesson in life, let Nature be your guide with parks nearby.    

Don’t be blind and deaf to those who need you, you still have the right stuff,  the ability to be a purveyor of light in even one person’s eyes, take them under your wing, to indicate hope is available for those who have fallen on hard times, maybe even an immigrant who left everything behind. 

Don’t be shortsighted thinking only of appeasing self with presents or even family when you can support struggling others. You can also lend aid to all those vigilant organizations surrounding you designed to make life safer. You can volunteer in schools, hospitals, senior centers, churches, soup kitchens, and those selfless organizations which couldn’t survive without you.  

Finally celebrate a Newspaper that still prints local happenings so you can partake in a sense of community as it rises in importance no matter the course of this country or world events because you live here, no matter where you came from, no matter your politics, your identity is forged within this very community.

Take charge no only of your life, but fill in the gaps of needy others, and still have a singular voice,  a need to be heard, served up in your very own county newspaper.