Stephen’s Holiday Message for 2005

To all my friends and family,

This is a time of year where it’s traditional to reflect upon our personal values and plan our lives for the upcoming year. It’s a time of long nights and short days, year-end madness at work followed by endless shopping for friends and family, perhaps doing a Christmas show or two, and if you’re just a little like me, not enough sleep.

On a daily basis over the past year, we have been bombarded with news reports of our fellow human beings dying throughout the world; from the tsunami in southeast Asia, to the earthquakes, record-breaking hurricanes and other natural disasters that have shaken our country and our world. The environmental news for the future ain’t so bright either, for us or our children.

Additionally, whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, all patriotic Americans pray for the safe return of our friends and loved ones from Iraq, even while listening to daily reports of more of them dying and hoping we don’t know the names.

And so, with all of that in mind, our culture still uses this time of year to celebrate, in whatever manner deemed special to you, a time of renewal, a time of birth, in these long winter nights. Embedded within this celebration, we strive to find faith, to find healing, and most importantly, to find peace, both within ourselves and in the world around us. It is in the spirit of peace that I offer the following poem. I wish I could say I was as profound as the writer, but I’m not. The poet was murdered many years ago on his doorstep. He was a controversial person before he died, and he still is to this day. I do not offer this poem to offend anyone, but in the spirit of this season of reflection, renewal and re-birth, I ask you to reflect upon the words of this poem.

So as you gather with your family and friends this season and celebrate all the people and things important to you, I ask you to reflect on how the world in the past year has changed you.

More importantly, I ask how you plan to change your world next year.

Always with love,
Stephen Carver


And so this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over if you want it
War is over now

By John Lennon