Whenever my mom hears “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” she gets misty-eyed. She remembers the seasonal gatherings in her home. Food and family. And singing along to Bing Crosby’s 1943 hit song.

As a small child, she couldn’t quite figure out why the elders had tears in their eyes while they sang.

Written during the Second World War, the song is in the voice of a lonely soldier, writing home from abroad, thinking of his family. It sounds like a promise—“I’ll be home for Christmas / You can plan on me”—but it’s really a wish: “I’ll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams.”

For a lonely soldier, the wish, even just that, is a comfort. In 1944, the year after it was a hit in North America, the U. S. War Department issued it as a “V-Disc” for soldiers at the front.

For a family back home, the song would have marked a son’s absence. And for a nation at war, the song expresses, like a more traditional Christmas carol, “the hopes and fears of all the years.”

Assembling the Living History corner of the editorial page this year, and looking ahead to the next, I have frequently found myself in both 1914 and 1944. The Picton Gazette in the latter is full of hopes for the end of World War II. In the former, the fear is of the massive “modern” war just setting in — not yet formally called the First World War.

One editorial, on the New Year’s Eve of 1914, wondered, “How shall each one of us spend that of 1915? Pleasantly I hope. And, by that time, may this awful war — waged so fearfully and in so modern a way in aeroplanes, trenches and submarines — be a thing of the past; may Honor and Defence of the Weak (the inspiration of our Allies) prevail against Barbarism, and the 1916 wish ‘A Happy New Year,’ be the wish universal.”

Similar sentiments, perhaps a bit more hopeful, were expressed in the 1944 New Year’s editorial, which is featured in Living History this week.

During both wars the Gazette regularly ran a series called “Letters from the Front.” Sons’ letters home, shared by their parents.

Christmas and New Year’s loom large in these letters.

In December 1914, Russell Young, just before shipping out of England to build huts in France, wrote to his mother:

“I was up to the City of London about three weeks ago and I tell you it’s a fine city, I saw some fine sights and fine buildings. I am going to Glasgow to spend Christmas, my chum and I; he is a good fellow. Was pleased to hear from Stanley and Rita and tell them not to worry, for I am having a good time; but would like to see all and be home for Christmas and a good skate. Will send you all Christmas postcards and something for Christmas, but if it doesn’t reach you till after Christmas you will have to excuse me, as it takes two weeks or more to cross the ocean. Now write to me every week and send me a paper, the Gazette. I will write as often as possible. Give father my love and all.”

The letters home all strive to be conversational, to banish fear. One long one recounts in animated detail the sheer discomfort of life in the trenches. “Rats as big as cats” writes soldier Harold Wright in 1915, and “the fellows have been having a louse catching contest. The winner caught 75 of them.”

Sgt. J. H. Harvey wrote home in late November 1915, “Dear Parents, Brothers and Sisters,” reassuring them of his good health, and describing life at the front: “We are now in the trenches again for a few weeks but we will soon be out again for a good rest. There are times when you would never dream that there was a war on at all, and then we have spells that give us the impression that all hell has been turned loose.”

He finishes by stressing his commitment to the common good.

“I state before closing that there is no need to worry over me, as I am contented and am here to do my share in a grand good cause. I am only one, but units make tens, tens make hundreds and hundreds make thousands, and there are hundreds more that could and would be in the ranks if they would but stop a minute and picture the contrast between our present life of liberty and the compulsory German military bondage under which we must all bow the knee should the enemy conquer us, and this I hope and trust will never come to pass. I am freely giving all I have and hold dear to help to preserve our liberty and the honor of our women and children from further molestation from the enemy.”

Sgt. Harvey sent home the true spirit of Christmas.

None of these First World War soldiers made it home for Christmas. Each of them is named on the Cenotaph in Picton.

In January 1944, the Gazette printed a letter home from Pte. Harold Heffernan, reporting on his and his brother Milton’s convalescence after being wounded in December. He is thinking of home: “The weather hasn’t been too bad here lately, but it is quite cool and cloudy. I suppose it is quite cold at home now, isn’t it, mother, and have you any snow or not?”

And, of course, Christmas: “Just think, one week from to-day will be Christmas day. I’m afraid we won’t have much of a Christmas this year, but we could be a lot worse off though, I suppose. This will be the fifth Christmas away from home, won’t it mother, anyhow hope and pray it’s the last one and that we’re all well and home before another one.”

In a short letter concluding, “Well mother news and space is scarce,” Pte. Heffernan has used “mother” no fewer than eight times.

Both Heffernan brothers, I am glad to say, did eventually make it home for Christmas.

As we gather together this season, and, maybe, sing this song, let us remember both those present and those absent. Our sense of home keeps us centered no matter where we are.

And a Merry Christmas to all.