Tri-City Ledger -

With Christmas on us I think back to some of my first Christmas holidays, like most other kids the important thing to me was being out of school for a couple of weeks. Waking up on Christmas morning and coming into the living room and seeing all those presents was about the only thing better than being out of school for two weeks.

Our parents always tried to rush us off to bed on Christmas Eve night because they would be lucky if one of us didn't wake up before four o'clock in the morning. Of course when we got up they got up, in fact I remember one year waking up just after midnight and g...