Christmas Presence

If you celebrate Christmas in this part of the world, you probably have boxes. They spend most of the year in the basement or the attic or the cupboard, waiting for their annual re-birth in anticipation of the Holy Birth. Lights (a few burnt out), tree ornaments (do we really have to put that one up again this year?), stockings, Christmas stories, leftover napkins, and decorations are all delivered into the cool light of December.   We have these boxes in our home, of course. But one box is special. One I open only when alone, and free of small helping hands. One I open with trepidation. For it contains the crèche, the Nativity set. And this Nativity set was molded out of ceramic and carefully painted by my in-laws before I was even born. For some reason the task of unpacking it falls to me, and I perform this annual work fully aware of the ramifications of any potential accident. The Nativity set is a product of its time. The figures are large, ten or twelve inches high. They...

Loneliness can be contagious Study finds solitary feeling affects friends, family Rob Stein, Canwest News Service |  Vancouver Sun , December 2, 2009 Loneliness is like a disease – and what's worse, it's contagious. Although it may sound counterintuitive, loneliness can spread from one person to another, according to research released Tuesday that underscores the power of one person's emotions to affect friends, family and neighbours. The federally funded analysis of data collected from more than 4,000 people over 10 years found that lonely people increase the chances that someone they know will start to feel alone, and that the solitary feeling can spread one more degree of separation, causing a friend of a friend or even the sibling of a friend to feel desolate. The new analysis, involving 4,793 people who were interviewed every two years between 1991 and 2001, showed that having a social connection to a lonely person increased the chances of developing feelings of loneli...