Christmas-2012

The Christmas season is about good news and cheer. There are many things for which I am personally thankful, and I hope that the Christmas holiday season will bring happiness to the residents of Dacula and our area. The season is about overeating; it’s about the holiday smells that reminds us of our childhood and the excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning. And this 2012 season is also about worry, concern, and corrosive wondering if the best is past in America. The time is about changing seasons and the wonders of the elements.

Colder weather is with us now between the Thanksgiving holidays and Christmas time here in Dacula. Changing seasons mean that fall is giving way to winter, and also signal the close of another year for the City—another year of economic downturn, and economic growth for the City, of budgets amended, balanced, and proposed. We are having some good news on the job front as entrepreneurs have created new jobs in the City and the number of people with jobs has increased here in 2012. Good news on that front, but I had hoped that employment numbers would be better. Unemployment rates appear to be trending slowly down, but the number of Americans who have stopped looking for work or who are out of work is way too high. So on every front there is good news and bad news.  A special election to allow the sale of packaged distilled spirits passed in the City in November, another mixed blessing of good news and bad news.

In that respect, let me assure you that this economic cycle will pass though the recovery will seem endless especially for those who have been hardest hit. The United States of America is strong precisely because of its people. Those that believe that America, as we have lived it, is over are wrong. We are the United States and don’t let anyone tell you any different. The United States is strong because you are strong. There is good news coming however slowly. That is the good news.

But the best news that was ever announced at a government called meeting happened a long time ago in a place far away from Dacula. Sheep were being tended in the fields.  Members of David’s extended family were gathering in Bethlehem of Judah, for the emperor’s census. On a dark night, angels gloriously appeared to frightened shepherds to announce the birth of a child--a child unlike any other ever born—a Savior, Christ the Lord! The end result of the program didn’t work out exactly like the Emperor Augustus, Governor Quirinius nor the elite of the era had it planned. Neither will our current situation.

My hope, for each of you and your extended family, is that you have a marvelous Christmas by remembering that Child who changed the world—even Dacula.