A Merry Christmas to you and yours — may the people under your roof never fall out, and may your roof never fall in.

The freedom gift . . .

It’s Christmas, we’re Canadian, and we’re free!

Do gifts come any better than that?

The freedom gift came to us as a legacy from the people of our past; people we cannot thank but can appreciate.

It is a generous legacy, one we need hold as tenaciously as they have done. It was given us to share with others, to cherish, to guard with our lives, as some do now. It is now our duty to pass it on to our children, if possible, better than it was given to us.

There is no gift card.

If there were it would tell us their legends, their songs and their stories. Stories we should know, stories we should tell often together with songs of praise, for there were heroes and heroines among them. Their tales are our tales; their fumbles and stumbles ours, their random acts of kindness ours too. Helping they were, and hindering, hollering, howling, living, loving, luring, booing, cheering, going to war in other lands, living and dying, the good and the bad mixed up like a dog’s breakfast, just like us, bringing us to this day, sharing their inheritance of freedom. An inheritance cherished by many in our world, shared by too few.

It is a worthy gift. A gift to celebrate, and any time is a good time to remember them and their gift. How fortunate we are to have been born in this land, or to have emigrated here. Working together we can live up to their legacy and return the gift.

Merry Christmas Canada!

A Happy New Year. May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.

May your favorite people, sights and sounds be with you this season.

May the gifts you share individually be the equal of those we share collectively.

May the freedom we share on this continent spread everywhere.

May our troops at war be blessed with the luck of the Irish, and our continuing support as they secure the gift of freedom.