While most people are gathering around the Christmas tree and wrapping their final gifts, the Good Earth Plants team is busy putting a bow on the 2013 Christmas season. We still have a solid week’s worth of work to do delivering last-minute orders, checking on big décor projects and making sure the tree at Horton Plaza is holding up after the mix of weather we have had. Whew!

While it’s not yet over for us, I wanted to stop for a moment and send along my thoughts on the season to all of you who kindly read my musings throughout the year.

Each year it seems like the holidays take on two different aspects for me. There is always the news broadcast that includes a summary of the high-end presents available through a major upscale retailers catalog. From a trip to outer space to a diamond-studded brassiere, I am amazed by what is sold on these  glossy pages filled with treasure.

Then I will see a news clip of a family that has a loved one overseas serving in the military. Or a widower who loses all he loves in a horrific fire that engulfs his home of 45 years. It is the reality of  life that makes me stop and take a deep breath and think about those close to me.

So we have this “holiday season” of about four weeks where we write cards, shop for gifts that we think people need and toss tinsel on a tree that once graced a forest.

Four weeks.

What else can we do in four weeks? Can we offer to walk a neighbor’s dog? Can we buy a roll of stamps for the older woman who lives across the street? Can we pick up the phone and just say “I am thinking of you” to someone far away?

I know. It’s easy to sit here thinking up things to do and roll out the platitudes. But this year if we took a moment to remember that there are a lot of people hurting in this world, we might change our memories of the 2013 holiday season. We may be able to keep the holidays in our hearts as a miserly literary character once did after a night of bad dreams. When it’s over and done with, the holidays aren’t all about the STUFF. It’s all about PEOPLE.

From our PEOPLE to yours, we wish you the happiest of Holidays and may you keep the season close in your heart throughout the years to come!

**Good Earth Plants is hiring! Please visit our website at www.goodearthplants.com to complete an application.**