Well, it took some time, and I still have a ton of wrapping to do, but I am finally turning the 3rd corner into the final run to feeling the emotions and inner warmth of the Christmas Times....

The music I am listening to helps a lot, plus the memories I am running through that big screen in my mind.... it's all good and it all helps me.

I remember, for instance, standing at the Berlin Wall in 1965, Christmas Eve, with my entire company, as we sang Stille Nahct, in German, to the East Germans and the Russians on the other side of that Wall.

Before we were started on the second time around for that song, as it was being well received, we had maybe a hundred or so West Berliners gathered around us, and we all sang, together, and those on the Eastern side of that Wall listenend, and then they started singing with us, even some of the Russians, and we, of course, did the song a third time.

I was only 18 years old, and I felt so beautifully happy at that time, and I think we may have made a good statement to all who heard us that evening.

No music, but all acapella, and it was beautiful. A most beautiful and highly emotional evening. At the end, no one applauded, it was that special.... but we did hear, "Fröhliche Weihnachten" and, "Schastlivogo Rozhdestva" - Merry Christmas in German and in Russian.... that was applause enough for us - for all of us.

For a short while we had no Wall between us, no Wall separating man from man, woman from woman, family from family. We were all, together, emotionally holding hands and feeling the strength of love.

It would take years for that Wall to come down, and when it did I stood in my living room, watching it, and I'm not ashamed to say that I cried, at the beauty of it finally falling. And I remembered, again, that Christmas Eve in West Berlin.....