JR Manning

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends out there.

It’s a bittersweet Christmas for the family and friends of Paige Birgfeld. As we reported to you some months ago, Paige is a friend of ours from the direct selling industry. She left her home at 10:30 PM on June 28 and has not been seen, or heard from, since. She has been profiled on ABC News. Her case aired on America’s Most Wanted. Hundreds have searched, unsuccessfully, for her. She remains missing.

Her parents are distraught, left behind in Colorado. Paige’s three children were ripped from their grandparents by a magistrate and custody was taken away from Paige’s parents and granted to their father, Paige’s ex-husband. The children are living with him, in Pennsylvania, and have no contact with their grandparents, we cannot tell you why that is. You can speculate why that is and probably be correct.

Paige Birgfeld
Paige’s story is, sadly, not an unusual one today. Hundreds of people are missing around the country. You hear about the high-profile cases, like Stacy Peterson or Natalee Holloway, which is a good thing, but for every Stacy and every Natalee, there are hundreds more cases that you never hear about.

You can read about Paige at a new site called Help Find the Missing. Log on (follow the link to the left) and look at the list of Missing people to navigate to Paige’s page. One thread lists all of the relevant media stories about her and her case. While you’re there, look over the other missing people. Who knows, you may have the one missing piece of information that is needed to bring someone home.

It’s up to us. Merry Christmas to you all, and please, remember Paige and her family today as you are surrounded by your own loved ones.

Ludwig von Beethoven would be 237 years old today, or Monday, no one is really sure. Of course, that’s if he were alive.

But instead, he’s decomposing.

The tradition of a Christmas Tree goes back many centuries, in fact, probably before Christianity. It is said that ancient peoples placed evergreen boughs inside their doors at the peak of Winter, to remind them that Spring would come again. Martin Luther is said to have been the first to decorate a tree in the house, using candles to represent the birth of the Christ child. Legend has it that the Germanic Christmas traditions came to the colonies with the Hessians during the Revolution, although it could just as easily been with the Pennsylvania Dutch, who were actually Germans - the Pennsylvania Deutsch.

Whatever the source, the tradition of having a brightly decorated tree in the living room at Christmastime is a reminder to us all of the most joyous event in Christianity.

Unless you’re a kitten, in which case, a Christmas tree is the world’s largest cat toy.

With two kittens in the house this year, Puck and Pyewacket, the placement of a Christmas tree is mostly an exercise in futility. The first mistake was to put a tree up at all. The second mistake was to decorate it with ornaments, unbreakable of course, that tend to jump off the tree to attack passing kittens. The ill-behaved ornaments also roll around on the floor, usually with a cats’ paws attached to them.

Have you ever entered a room with the feeling that you’re being watched? How about the feeling of being watched by a Christmas tree? Last night, I didn’t remember placing yellow-green lights on the tree, but there they were, right about the middle of the tree, looking out at me. In the darkness, I did not see the shadowy outline of a black cat, but those yellow-green eyes were those of Pyewacket, who was instantly sprayed with a squirt bottle, one of several strategically placed around the house, used to remind kittens of certain places they should not be.

Like that’s going to stop those two natural clowns from climbing our Christmas tree. Dangling, shiny ornaments are just too tempting for curious kitties.

Maybe we’ll just scrub the mission for this year and try to launch a Christmas tree next season.

Yule just have to stop back here then to see how it goes.

How do you detect an overnight snowfall?

Do you see the fluffy white on the tree branches?

Perhaps you look for a white dusting on the lawn.

Maybe you even see the contrast of a cardinal hopping across the fresh, whiteness of the snowfall.

Me?

I just look for the location of my mailbox.

Plow: 1 Mailbox: 0

“He’s dead, Jim.”

Maybe I’ll just give up and get a PO Box at the post office.