By BONNIE BRANCIAROLI
The Inter-Mountain
ELKINS, W.Va. — Christmas is a time of rebirth and a time of hope as the world looks forward to a New Year.
Those who believe in magic and miracles find Christmas the absolute “Best Time of the Year.”
It can be said that Christmas is for children, but adults can find just as much magic in watching their children’s reactions to the myriad pleasures of the Holiest of Days.
Christmas Day is chronicled by just about every family in the country, and one of the best places to connect with friends and family on the special day is Facebook.
On Christmas Day, Facebook is aflutter with photos of Christmas trees, kids opening packages, smiling faces of grandparents, dinners dawning tables, group family photos and the list goes on and on.
It’s a fun time to wander around the social site and ask, “What is your Christmas wish this year?”
By Facebook messenger, Seana Lasky-Marshall of Belington and wife of Scotty Marshall, owner of the Vintage Restaurant and Wine Bar in Elkins, answered.
“My Christmas wish is to see my daughter (and the other kids in my family) experience the magic of Christmas and believing,”she wrote.
Along with her wish, Marshall sent a photo of her daughter, Charlotte, making Christmas crafts to give to visiting family and friends. Beside Charlotte was her Elf on the Shelf, Ezra.
“I love this picture of Charlotte making crafts” Marshall added. “She was so excited because Ezra had locked himself in a jar so she could carry him around for the day.”
Charlotte had told her mother that the elf cannot be touched or he loses his magic!
Husband, Scotty Marshall received his Christmas wish early this year. He was recently told his wife was expecting in May and just before Christmas found out he was looking forward to a son.
“He was beyond excited!” Marshall said.
Trish Gordon of Buckhannon sent in her wish, too, by Facebook messenger hoping, “my family and friends to be happy and healthy” in the coming year.
Having no children of her own, Gordon is a doting aunt.
“We visited Morris Park in Fairmont to see the lights this year,”she wrote. “It was a nice thing to do with my grandparents, and all the while my niece sang Christmas songs.”
Connie Linger of Elkins recently experienced the loss of a loved one in her family, Terry Captain “T” Siewert.
“I would only wish for something that I believed would come true,” she wrote through Facebook message. “It’s easy to wish for things of grandeur, of things not easily obtained such as tolerance blended with a mutation of individual beliefs and practices around our spiritual lives … or even a rhetorical and possibly global wish to melt us all together under one set of standards.”
Linger’s Christmas wish is “close to the heart.”
“My wish is for all of us to spend a little more time reaching out to our neighbors,” Linger continued. “To put down your “device” for a few minutes and look around you! This wish I have reflects what I witnessed in my Captain, in his everyday walk. My wish might also include a challenge, a challenge to use our devices to showcase more of the kindness shown to us and by us. I believe Elkins, West Virginia, is destined to become a leader in this challenge and that all who live here have a chance to “show ’em how it’s done!”
Mina Cupp of Beverly, a retired registered nurse with 20 years of service at Memorial General and Davis Memorial hospitals in Elkins, is the wife of dairy farmer, Harry “Bud” Cupp III, a mother of two sons and grandmother to three.
Cupp doesn’t use social media much, but is a fervent church-goer. She is an Elder of Davis Memorial Presbyterian and chairman of the Fellowship Committee.
As the wife of a dairy farmer, Cupp has bottle-fed literally thousands of calves, and as she said, “They come into this world all times of the year.”
“One Christmas Eve, I had 42 calves on bottles,” Mina reminisced, “and I was so upset that I was missing church service. But, I took it in stride and looked around me – at the fog in the barn from the warmth of the animals to the snow gently falling outside, and a realization came to me … ‘You know, this is where it all began!’ … and a real peaceful feeling came over me.”
A realization can be just as powerful as a Christmas wish, and as 2016 wanes and 2017 raises its hand in greeting, may peace and understanding be realized and a full list of happy beginnings fill the wish list.
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