In the era of President-Elect Donald P. Trump, many remain anxious about the coming new year. The nation’s capital is seen from the heartland like a 21st century Sodom and Gomorrah. But a step back in time captured in the 1971 TV Christmas Special “The Homecoming” set in the Great Depression on Christmas Eve 1933 introduced viewers to a family called the Waltons with a brood including John Boy, who aspired to be a newspaper writer; a younger son who wore knickers and shared a story about squeezing a little duck; and a family that gathered to listen to the radio — carrying comedy shows like Fibbe Magee and Molly. Only a Grinch would have told the Walton family filled with the spirit of the holiday seen laughing in 1933 at the Christmas Eve Special on the radio that nothing was possible. Imagine what they’d experienced: the Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt the 32nd President campaigning in 1932 against America’s involvement in foreign wars; the country rocked by the stock market crash of 1929, the banking crisis that followed the economic downturn; Hooverville dotted almost every large town, and a soup kitchen line stretched around every city block.

As FDR led the country in these dark days, he could reflect on his boyhood and time spent at family Christmases at Springwood, his family’s estate in Hyde Park, New York. The family had several sleighs including one bobsled he enjoyed riding as a teenager for when snow covered the roads. He enjoyed sledding down a large hill in front of their home with his cousins the Delanos.

I am quick to identify with the spinster’s bootleg Baldwin sisters Mamie and Emily who always pined for her lost love, Ashley Longworth, waiting for him to return one day while making the judge’s recipe still clinging to a belief in Santa Claus. I still hang a stocking over the mantle place each year but like the sisters, since my parents passed some time back, he does not seem to pay a visit anymore,

I spent most of last Christmas searching for reindeer tracks on my rooftop. I will be up before first light this year certain I will find some!

The innocence of the children on Walton’s Mountain that Christmas Eve now so long ago calls to me. They were so unaware of the dangers that lurked in the future brought about by the onset of World War II. Recently a lady speculated that today is like the 1930s. Mark Twain said “History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” FDR was Commander in Chief for 12 Christmases. He spent 10 at the White House and the last two at Hyde Park where he delivered his Christmas Message to a nation at war in 1944 as the Battle of Bulge was waged on snow-covered frozen ground in Europe. In 1941 Winston Churchill spent Christmas Eve with Roosevelt at the White House and he spoke at the lighting of the Christmas Tree following FDR dedicating the night to “make the children happy in a world of storm.”

If this is the 1930s being replayed again then to the paraphrase Churchill, make the children happy this Christmas for a World at War waits for them.

I read somewhere this Christmas season that what is behind us is so little and what is in front of us so little but what is inside us is so much greater. Find the Greatest Inside as Whitney Houston sang Find Your Strength in LOVE!

Leave your figure skaters tracing figures on the ice this holiday season.

Is anyone up for a Sleigh Ride with a couple of old Bootleggers in search of my daddy? Let it snow!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 1934!