THE REWARD

(A Christmas Poem)

I’m giving you so much more

Than a gift today.

I’m giving you

Your just reward.

This is your reward

For loving me

Into being.

This is your reward

For letting me smile

Into your eyes

And cry

Upon your shoulder.

This is something

You deserve

For letting me

Into your life.

Consider this

Your just desserts

For making me

Feel so good.

There are more ways

To tell you

What you already know

Is true.

I expect nothing

In return

Except to love you as long

As the world turns.

This is your reward.

This is my reward.

The Polar Express and Me: An Anniversary

Every year since Chris Van Allsburg's book The Polar Express was published in 1985, the book has been read aloud either by my father or by me on Christmas Eve night. Tonight marked the 25th time this has been done. I only pull the book out once a year, on this night. The need to do this seeps into me gently, like an angel spreading her loving kindness throughout my being.

I know there are recordings of the book, read by the likes of William Hurt and Liam Neeson. I know there is a rather prominent film of The Polar Express that was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Tom Hanks, or more accurately, his computerized likeness. I daren't see the film or hear any other voice read the book. To do so would allow the magic I feel every year to be polluted, and then disappear completely. The Polar Express, as I understand it, is a sacred entertainment.

Van Allsburg writes of the most magical sound in the world: "the ringing bells of Santa's sleigh". The sound it makes is entirely what you imagine it to be. To me, it is a sound not of this world, but a celestial, ethereal trill. And all who believe in Santa Claus hear the sound and lock it away, in the safest place in their hearts. As adults, we get jaded, we get cynical about Christmas. The two worst words a child can hear, at least in my view, are "Christmas Shopping". When a child hears those words, Christmas stops being about what it was meant to be. It becomes about buying the shiniest diamond, the biggest television, making the best ham or baked Alaska. A child deserves so many Christmases, unchecked by worldly concerns and anguishes.

"Though I've grown old, " Van Allsburg concludes his book, "The bell rings for me as it does for all who truly believe." If I'm still reading his masterpiece twenty-five years after its publication, a very strong case could be made that I believe in Santa Claus. And I believe I always will.

Do You Realize...

Ladies and Gentlemen, do you realize:

--that by one report, tickets for Friday night's NBA Game between the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden cost as much as $79,000? I'll bet there's at least one person who leveraged his child's college tuition so that he could smell LeBron James' B.O.. Isn't that sad?

--that more people will attend this year's Super Bowl in that monument to Jerry Jones' ego outside Dallas than live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Cape Coral, Florida or Albany, New York? Or that more people have been murdered in Chicago this year--412--than live in its suburb of Arlington?

--that for every McDonald's in the U.S., there are as many as three Barnes & Noble employees?

--that Donald Trump's net worth ($2 billion) is more than the gross national product of American Samoa ($575.3 million)?

--that there are only 121 more inmates on death row in every prison in America than there are residents of the Falkland Islands?

--that neither our current President or Vice President served in any military capacity prior to assuming office, and both men are attorneys? (In fairness, Vice President Biden was reclassified as ineligible by the Selective Service, as he had asthma as a teenager.)

--that on average, 642, 000 people watch ESPN and ESPN2 every day combined--88 million people every month. That's nearly double the amount that watch Lifetime on average per day.

--that a week ago, five days before the basketball game I mentioned before, the great opera star Renee Fleming gave a recital at Chicago's Lyric Opera House, where she has accepted a position as an artistic consultant. The show sold out; the top ticket price to see Fleming's voice soar like an angel's: $149.

Just some brain food for you to chew on...