How it became personally meaningful for me was through my mom. She loved that song....so much so that she wrote out the first words..Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me ....
in her lovely script on shiny red paper. Very large! Then she carefully cut it out and every Christmas she would tape it above the mantle on their fireplace. And when she took her decorating down, she would carefully roll the lettering up on a wrapping paper roll, covering the whole thing with plastic and putting it away until the next year.
In 1979, at Christmas, my parents invited all of us...my 85 year old grandmother, all my sister's family, my three cousins, and my bachelor brother to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. If we could get ourselves there, my parents would provide a place to stay. And go we did! They had rented a four unit condo for a week, going down a few days before the rest of us, to get things ready. My mom loved her traditions and wanting Christmas to remain the same even though far from home, she had brought her letters with her! She didn't have a fireplace chimney on which to display them, but she had a stairwell which worked perfectly!
In the picture I have here are my two daughters, 11 and 14, my niece 11 and one of my nephews 13. So when the congregation at church began singing that song, I was flooded with Christmas memories past !
What a beautiful story! Merry Christmas!
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