When T. S. Eliot wrote “Journey of the Magi,” he borrowed his opening lines from a sermon by the Reverend Lancelot Andrewes, written some three centuries before Eliot came along, trying to imagine the journey of the three wise men to Bethlehem.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp.
The very dead of winter.

This was not a reflection upon the weather conditions in the Middle East nearly two millennia before. Like Andrewes (and like Harry Evans across the page in Living History), Eliot knew the cold and damp and sometimes the snow of a northern English climate. Much like that of Prince Edward County.

Eliot’s poem is not a merry one. It is stark in its assessment not of the difficulties of the weather but of the alienating experience of the wise men, there to bear witness to the coming of a new order, a new Birth, who find themselves suddenly, radically, out of place.

When the Kings return home, their Kingdoms are no longer glorious.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

Gratitude is not the emotion expressed by this poem. Acknowledgment might be the right word. “I would do it again,” says one wise man, but at the same time, he says,  “I should be glad of another death.”

At this season, I wish to acknowledge the weight of history, but also to express gratitude for being accepted into its long, broad and never-finished sweep.

This is only our second Christmas as publishers of the nearly 200-year-old Picton Gazette. We have encountered not a few “Magi” of the traditional County ways. We have many times been told directly that we are new and not County-born. We have been told that we are not welcome, that we have ruined not only the Gazette, but the County itself. We try to take this in stride. T.S. Eliot helps.

But although tangible, this is not the general tenor of the welcome we have received. Almost daily, I get to share the sheer pleasure of the newspaper with its readers.

For that, I am truly grateful.

Earlier this fall, I bumped into a friend at Queen’s I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. In the few minutes between classes we did a rapid catch-up. She hadn’t heard that I’d become a community newspaper publisher. I described it to her this way: “Any time I walk down Main Street, people smile or wave. Someone I don’t know will address me by name. Someone I’ve met, but whose name I have forgotten, will shake my hand. Someone whose name I do know, but have only met once or twice will linger on the corner to talk — sometimes just about the weather. I try to return these favours and then find myself telling a joke to a complete stranger.”

I was going on, but she interrupted me. “Oh my God!” she said, “you’re Jimmy Stewart!”

I was flattered, of course. But it also made me feel grateful to this community in which I live for letting me think I’m living in a Frank Capra movie. It’s a Wonderful Life is a longtime family favourite. We will all be heading out to see it at The Regent — on the house! — when it plays next week.

A lot of people tell me they like what we’re doing with the paper. Some even say thank you.

For me gratitude does not need to be so direct. The simple act of greeting contains it. This is why we pay visits at Christmastime. This is why Christmas coincides with Wassail. We’re giving thanks, directly and indirectly.

Earlier this month, I was walking into town from Jones Automotive where I’d left the car for its annual snow tire change. As I came down Road 8, facing oncoming traffic, a car pulled over onto the shoulder in front of me. I kept walking, but the driver rolled down her window. It was my neighbour, Reverend Aaron Miechkota, of both Cressy-Glenora and South Bay United Churches.

“Is everything okay?”

I explained I was just walking into town. She very kindly offered me a lift — even though she was headed in the opposite direction. I declined, saying I was enjoying my walk on such a bright, brisk morning.

“I just wanted to check,” she said, “I imagined you were walking in from Cressy!”

That would indeed have been cold coming and such a long journey! Perhaps Rev. Aaron had been reading T.S. Eliot — or maybe Lancelot Andrewes.

Our chat was brief but rewarding. I was so glad she’d stopped so we could catch up, not on much beyond “Advent is a very busy time, but it’s a good busy,” but just to be face to face and to be reminded that people are watching out for each other. In ways little and large. Every day. I felt grateful. 

But wait. There’s more. A week after Rev. Aaron pulled over on Road 8, I was again walking the same route, having dropped off the other car for snow tires—a little bit late, and behind the weather. It was snowing, cold, wet. A cold coming was being had of it.

And, guess what? As I trudged along, I heard a voice, “Chris? Do you need a lift?” More neighbours had pulled over across the road. This time, I accepted the offer. And again I said thanks — for the ride, for the conversation, and I actually said this out loud, “thanks for recognizing me all hidden in my hat and coat.”

Gratitude may be the hardest emotion. You need the confidence to be both generous and humble — to recognize and to be recognized. It is also probably the most necessary emotion. We are fundamentally social beings, indebted to one another in ways large and small.

As the year-end issues of the Gazette fill with local businesses and community groups and just plain people expressing their thanks to all their customers and contacts, friends and family, please allow us to to extend our thanks to everyone who makes the paper possible. Our creative, friendly, and ultra-reliable staff. Freelance contributors. Letter and column writers. To the host of our advertisers, large and small, we don’t get a chance to say it often: we are enormously grateful to you. We love seeing you in our pages, in print, week after week. And let us not forget the post office workers and the drivers who’ve stepped in to make sure delivery continues.

And, on behalf of all of us at the paper, I thank the community of readers who have very thoughtfully engaged and responded, who have sometimes cautiously acknowledged, and often spontaneously celebrated, the act of attending to one another, which is what we hope the Gazette does, in ways large and small.

Gratias vobis agimus.