Holiday Message

``Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ``Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!''

So speaks the ghost of Jacob Marley to his old partner, Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

The difficult economic times and the wars we are engaged in cause us to worry and perhaps to fear. Our budget has been cut and will be cut further in the New Year. The State tax revenues seem likely to be moribund for up to two more years. Around us and perhaps in our families there are those who are out of work, some now into their second year of unemployment, some perhaps having given up. Loved ones are serving their country and some are in harm’s way.
We have seen the evil that results when some believe their own narrowest self-interest is all that matters, when they best even Scrooge in ignoring Want and Ignorance for their own wealth or fanatical belief.

During times such as these, the work we do every day at Germanna Community College rises to an even higher level of importance and meaning. Our students, their families and communities, our Commonwealth and our nation are looking to Germanna and other community colleges for real hope---hope through valuable skills that lead to good work with good pay.

As we come to the end of another year and the holidays that fall at that time, it is good to reflect as well as celebrate. We at Germanna are blessed to have a mission that does indeed serve mankind.

My highest hope for all of those in our service area and for all of the faculty and staff at Germanna is that you each surround yourself with those who matter to you over the holidays, get away from work for a little while, and then come back with the same deep dedication to that mission of serving our students and communities that I have observed in every daily effort you give.

My highest hope for our students is that they come to us with a spirit of optimism and add to that their own best effort to take full advantage of the opportunities Germanna offers them, and that they each leave with more opportunities for good employment with good wages. I also hope they leave with an ethic of service to give back to others throughout their lives.

Regardless of our individual faith or beliefs, what Scrooge says during his transformation is a good goal for each of us:

``I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

My highest hope for each of you and for myself as well is that when our lives are accounted for we have said of us that we lived a life of service and of giving, that we left more than we took, that we made a difference. If that more broad definition of “honoring Christmas” is used, may we each have said of us what was said of Scrooge after his redemption:

“It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”