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       CHRISTMAS EVE, 1998

Happy Christmas to all of you who visit this site and this page throughout the year. To those just finding out about my work and all that have encouraged and sustained me through the years I send out love and seasons greetings. Have a high and happy holiday and I’ll see you on the Home Page in the morning, for what those of us who’ve worked on it call, "a semi-Grande Event"

                         - RM, Christmas, 1998                                

notable birthdays Noelle Adam o Jill Bennett o Cab Calloway o Kit Carson o Ruth Chatterton o Mary Higgens Clark o Mike Curb o Ava Gardner o Carol Haney o Howard Hughes o Robert Joffrey o Ricky Martin o I. F. Stone o Mark Valley o Harry Warren o Franz Waxman and I missed Eric Coker’s Birthday on the 17th, Sorry, Eric.
Rod's random thoughts Christmas is more like spring than winter; and because the name itself means mass for Christ, there isn’t any reason this holiday or holy day should not be celebrated all year long.

Life is too short not to believe in Santa or something.

A Toast: May your hand be full for always, if only with another hand. May your heart be empty only long enough to give you cause to fill it up again.

Love is a season and holidays like signposts mark the time.

BETHLEHEM BC

You could hear
the flapping of their wings
for some distance -
not a sudden rush
         or panic made by masses
but a slow coming together
quietly in the air.

Then, following that yellow highway
that the star provided
into Bethlehem they came.

Slow. Slow. Quietly.
like snowfall making up it’s mind
before a winter downpour

And winter it was.

On the ground
we huddled - first in awe,
          then in fright
thinking it miracle enough
that our important lives
should be interrupted
by creatures on a winter’s eve
who flew above us and beyond us,
to settle in the barnyard
         at the other end of town.

(We make up miracles to suit ourselves
and so we knew these winged persons
had been sent for our amazement,
and not to please the cattle
in an unremembered farmer’s barn.)

Were you there ?

But file into the barn they did
while some kept vanguard in the air
as though imagining they guarded
some important person
living there.

Some of us went home,
having seen them with no ill effect.
In the morning there’d be stores to open,
pigs to feed
and stories to enlarge upon
concerning what had happened
on the night before.

Were you there? 

                          -from "The Carols of Christmas," 1967   

© 1984, 1988, 1998 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved.
Birthday research by Wade Alexander
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