We wish you …

WE WISH YOU an Arkansas Christmas: A bright Christmas morning that wakes you at once. A cold Christmas night that lets you see your breath. The sun coming up over the open fields, the gentle mists that hide city towers. The bright sun and cool shadows that mark the Ozarks. The soft light that reveals the bottomlands and hardwoods of the Delta. The morning light glistening off the pines in the gentle rolling hills trailing off to the plains of the Southwest.

We wish you the sound of good, honest Arkansas words wherever you are in this troubled world, whether in a great city far away from home or on a desert battlefield in Afghanistan-and the knowledge that you are in our hearts this day of all days, when hope is born anew, and all of us can speak of Peace and Good Will Toward Men without irony.

We wish you comfort in trouble, and strength in trial-in homes where one place at the table will be empty, in bivouacs where soldiers and airmen strengthen and cheer and tend to one another, in military hospitals and armored convoys and on patrol. We wish you smooth sailing on the high seas and soaring flight through the skies as you guard our Christmas.

We wish you the glow of candles and the sound of bells.

We wish you snowflakes and holly, city crowds and country stillness.

We wish you safe journeys and happy returns.

We wish you the kind of Christmas you remember best, and the kind you want your children to remember.

We wish you the joy of anticipation, the satisfaction of memory, and, in between, Christmas all day long.

We wish you a Christmas that is a homecoming wherever you may be.

We wish you commotion and delights strung out like so much popcorn on a string, and that you steel yourself to none of it.

We wish you a moment of perfect peace and contentment to savor the day.

We wish you a day apart, not a day lost first in the preparation, then in the execution, and finally even in memory.

We wish you a Christmas in the very present tense.

We wish you a Christmas complete-one that blesses the needy, comforts the lonely, eases suffering, lightens hearts, and brightens the eyes of those who most need cheering.

We wish you all the things we would wish for ourselves if we only had the wisdom to know what best to wish for.

We wish you the perfect Christmas gift and, a greater thing, the wisdom and grace to bestow it on others.

We wish you forgiveness, and the greater gift of being able to forgive.

We wish you yourself restored.

We wish those of you returning home from travel and trials an Arkansas Christmas in the spirit of John Gould Fletcher’s evergreen poem: The Christmas Tree

I have lived long, Longer by far than once my heart desired;

Have seen the race not given to the swift, not the victory to the strong.

Have felt the salty taste of kisses and the cold ache of being tired;

Have watched the wide earth covered With chaotic fury of motor cars,

Have known but little in the end, though much my mind discovered;

Have passed through deadly peace and deadlier wars;

Yet this at least I find is surely mine, After a long hard journey, and mighty cities seen-

The pure sweet scent of a southern long-leafed pine,

Dangling with chains and balls of glass and toys,

Into my nostrils breathed soft, rich and clean.