It used to be that we could open a greeting card in December that read "Happy Holidays" or even "Season's Greetings" without wondering what the sender has against Christmas. Why all the hypersensitivity to the correctness of good wishes these days?

Like Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of "A Christmas Carol," I hope to keep Christmas in my heart all year long. But some enthusiasts have twisted another page from Dickens' book, proposing a stake of holly for the hearts of all who do not go around with a "Merry Christmas" on their lips.

You can relax .... All the mailing deadlines are past, so if you haven't written your Christmas letter or mailed out your cards, they won't get there in time anyway. Just sit back, put on the Christmas carols, eat some gingerbread, and plan on a Valentine newsletter.

Spouse Calls column: Dec. 14

“Home is where the heart is.”
— Pliny the Elder (writer, military man)

I have one. Maybe you have one too. Plenty of military families do. It might be framed and sitting on a shelf, or perhaps hanging on the wall. It proclaims: “Home is where the (fill in your branch of service here) sends us.”

This is not a statement of resignation for our family, but a statement of determination. Determination is what it takes to keep the home fires burning when we are far from the familiar, sometimes separated by deployment – and when we don’t even have a fireplace.

This week's Spouse Calls was about "home" and what that means to military spouses who live around the world. I discovered quite a few quotes from well known people on the subject of home. Some of them seemed very applicable to this life we live. Maybe one of these fits you, or maybe you have your own.  

Home is where one starts from.
T.S. Eliot

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

Eileen Spinelli writes books for children, but the families in her stories are not always picture book families. Her stories, about dads who work the night shift and moms who in the military, depict life as lived by real children.

 “I don’t consciously look for families that may have a different configuration,” Eileen said of her work.

“I almost exclusively write from my own life, either from my own childhood or families around me,” she said. “Those stories are either in me already or come to me through my daily life.”