Some were incredibly happy that our snowstorm was a dud. If you wanted to see snow you had to be up in the middle of the night. It was pretty with the lights on it, but it did not last long.

Happy Birthday to all who celebrated their day this past week. Big balloons go out to Cooper Avakian, Asaph Braz and John Lynch, who all celebrated Dec. 19; Kaua Abreu, Christian Ciancio and Fallon McAleavey, Dec. 20; John Moriarty, Dec. 21; and to Anthony Pruciano who celebrated his day Dec. 23.

I, like lot of families, was expecting not to be here this week but off-Island with my family for Christmas. But I will be here with my Island family. The shopping is done, thank you Amazon Prime and direct shipping. Now the wrapping begins. Not my favorite thing to do but with the movie White Christmas on I can get it done much easier and faster.

As of this writing I have not gone around to look at the lights. But I am hearing good things about lighting around the Island. Also, on social media, people are posting beautiful pictures of inside their homes decorated. We have some exceptionally talented decorators and some perfectly decorated trees.

This is the time of year I explain about the “Home candles burning” but this year it has a little twist. My parents always put a white candle in the window on the right side of the sidewalk, to guide my brothers safely home from the service. I still do that but at the beginning of the pandemic, someone suggested putting a white light in the window for all the nurses for their tireless dedication to patients of the pandemic, plus all the other people in need. I have a few nurses in my family, so I am extremely glad to do it, but I think we must include all the other tireless front-line workers as well. So, this year lets thank them by shining the white light in the window for them as well. We need to still pray for and guide our service people, but I am sure they will share. Thank you and come home soon.

As 2020 comes to a close, I know we don’t want to see another year like this one, but we have to think of some happiness. There were babies born, there were weddings, maybe not the one you wanted but people were married. We appreciated the outdoors and got to explore places we might not ever visited, and some people learned how to be alone. That is a tough one as many were at home and not able to see family or friends. I think it gave us a power we did not know we had. We also had Zoom or Snapchat, or whatever you could do to video chat with your family. It is not the same as in person, but you got to see live people and hear their voices. But let us hope that things change in 2021 and we can get back a little normalcy.

Have a great week and keep the home candles burning.