Christmas – Perpetual Adoration

December 5, 2020

The Reflector Theory

When I was born (May 1957), my mom asked her 17-year-old brother, Dick LaHood, if he would be my godfather. My earliest memory of my Uncle Dick is from the early 1960s when he would pick up me and several of my brothers and sisters in his Cadillac and take us swimming at the Timber Lake Club.

December 21, 2019

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The Christmas Candy Conundrum

When I was 12 years old, I took over a paper route delivering newspapers for the Peoria Journal Star. The route included the neighborhood that I grew up in, which consisted of several of my relatives. The first year that I had my paper route, I was pleasantly surprised when I received gifts from several of my customers during the Christmas season.

August 24, 2019

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Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder

During the years that my children were growing up — the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s — my wife, Georgette, made sure that they were exposed to as much music as possible. When she was pregnant with each of them, she would pray, read, and sing out loud, so they would develop a love for God, reading, and music. After they were born, she did the same thing while she nursed each of them.

December 29, 2018

What Can You Do With A 43-Year-Old Tool Box?

Do you remember what you received for your 18th birthday? It’s been 43 years since I turned 18 (1975), but I still remember what I received from my parents. It was a 21-inch, gray metal Craftsman toolbox. Prior to my birthday, my mom had asked me what I wanted, and I wrote down the type of toolbox that could be purchased from Sears.

December 22, 2018

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Can We Stop Sending Christmas Newsletters?

For the past several years, Georgette and I have done what a lot of families do during the Christmas season — mail a Christmas newsletter and a picture of our family to our relatives and friends. When we started mailing the newsletter, it was less than a page long, but over the years, as our family grew with marriages and grandchildren, the newsletter eventually expanded to four pages of text (two pages, front and back).

December 23, 2017

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President Trump, Chick-fil-A, and Christmas

Regardless of what you think of President Trump, there’s one thing that he did this year that you probably agree with. It has to do with Christmas. During his campaign for president, Trump promised that he would bring back the word “Christmas” to the Christmas season. He complained about how he no longer sees the word anywhere in the stores during the Christmas season. He said that he was tired of seeing “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

December 24, 2016

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A Special Christmas Gift From God

I’ve written before about my younger sister, Kathryn Mary, who was born on September 13, 1972. Within a couple of days of her birth, her doctors discovered that she had Down syndrome and a heart defect that was going to eventually need to be corrected with open-heart surgery.

December 26, 2015

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A Thief in the Church

During the week, I do my best to attend Mass every day. Because Sacred Heart Church is only three blocks from my office, I usually end up walking there for the midday Mass, which starts at 12:05 p.m. Ordinarily there are 30 to 50 people who attend that particular Mass. About half of the people work downtown and the other half are people who are either retired or do not have a job that keeps them from driving downtown to attend the Mass.

December 19, 2015

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Would the Mother of God Ever Wear Jeans?

I’ve written before about the first time I went Christmas shopping alone with my mom. It was in 1969, when I was 12 years old. At that time, my parents had 13 children — seven boys and six girls — all of whom were living at home.