GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Dec. 3, 2003-- Tonight, more than 30,000 Christmas Tree lights will blaze to life at Rockefeller Center in the center of Manhattan.  Each one will symbolize a Sentinel of Vigilance, a glowing reminder that Peace and Prosperity are the ultimate goals of all Parents of Vigilance.

         Despite one's religious beliefs--Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, even atheist or agnostic--few can deny the presence of a glistening Christmas Tree shining in the night with packages nestled under its boughs doesn't warm any child's heart.
      The idea of a "Tree of Happiness and Joy" is more valuable than limiting it to a religious custom, for from a child's point of view the tree is about the magic of the season, a cornucopia of wistful imaginations about what is treasured inside the wrappings tucked and piled under the branches of the tree.

      In many cultures outside Christianity, the idea of giving the children gifts on a certain day of celebration has been going on since the dawn of time.    From the deepest darkest tribes in the most primitive jungles, to the highest, coldest peaks of the frozen north, certain days are set aside on the calendar of life to remind children that the magic of happiness and joy especially for them survives the often brutal landscape of trudging through daily life.
      Some children count the days throughout the year for the event to unfold, for to many the "Christmas" they enjoy may be the only time they are free to be children.    In some less advanced societies, children start their days of labor as soon as they can walk and talk unlike modern civilization that shelters children from being "their own" until they are well into their teens and even beyond.
      I remember the children in the villages of Vietnam.   Each had a job, a duty to the rest of the community whether it was watching a smaller child or carrying wood or helping in the planting of rice--no one was without the yoke of work.  There were no television sets, no schools, just the community working hand-in-hand with one another so they all could eat and survive.
      Yet, on special holidays, the children received gifts.  Some were as simple as a toy whittled by an elder, or something shiny that when viewed in the bright light gave a radiant design to the child's eye, sparking his or her imagination to wonder about the great fantasy of what lay beyond the jungle, out past the rice paddies and groves of bamboo from whence we came with our chewing gum and hot cocoa and chocolate bars.  

       Tonight, perhaps one of the most advanced of all civilized tree lightings will be viewed around the world as Mayor Bloomberg hits the switch that will race electricity to spark life into the tens of thousands of bulbs stitched into the limbs of the 79-foot Norway spruce that adorns the center of Rockefeller Plaza.  Atop the tree will be a ten-foot star, a beacon to many symbolizing the idea that there is Hope in this world that one day all nations and all people can sit with their children around a great Tree of Vigilance and share their common goals for the safety and security of future generations.
        But this goal may come the hard way.    Back in 1931 when construction was being started at Rockefeller Plaza, workmen stabbed a small, naked Christmas tree into the muddy soil.  There was no fanfare, no tree lighting.   It just existed there amidst the groan of machinery and the muck of a construction site.     

        A couple of years later in 1933 the first official tree lighting occurred.   It was simplistic in comparison to the global event of tonight's tree lighting.  Back then, it was a couple of bulbs and some tinsel--nothing glorious.   That spartan ceremony began a tradition that is now seven decades old and broadcast by television around this globe of 6 billion--one-third of which are children.   The annual tree lighting is like a Super Bowl kickoff--a defacto stamp that the Christmas Season--whether you like it or not--is officially here to stay for another year.
       Children look at Christmas or similar holidays in their cultures as a time of Peace and Joy.    It is their moment of glory, for children are the victims and witnesses of adult Terrorism.   They watch their parents fight and battle with one another and others in the great struggle to survive a world of both physical and emotional Beasts of Terror.
        In the most advanced of civilizations where wealth and opportunity abound, children still cower at the footsteps of their parents, afraid they will be scolded for something they might not have done well enough, or, abused by their parents in a range of ways from sexual to simple neglect where the parent is "too busy" to hug and love them.
       The advancement of civilization does not necessarily mean that human behavior has changed, or that someone living in a mansion treats his or her children better than someone in a claptrap, or existing in a hut in a village in the middle of a jungle.

      If all parents seek one thing for their children it is that their offspring have a better life than they have...that their children maximize the joys and riches of life both inside and out.
      Not all parents subscribe to this lofty goal.   Some consider children chattel, others look upon them as burdens and others may simply neglect their children, acting as though they didn't exist.
       Whether the child is loved or unloved, wanted or unwanted, happy or sad, the presence of the "holiday" that celebrates children becomes a life line.   Even the abused and victimized child wishes during the holiday that his or her greatest present will be that his or her mother or father express love.    Maybe, the gift would be to just hold them in their arms for a brief moment between the Terror moments.   

        As a child, I remember each Christmas waiting for my father to send me a Christmas card, or, maybe even a present.    My mother and father separated when I was nine months old and I never saw him, met him or felt his arms around me.    My mother remarried when I was five, but I never accepted my step-father, and clung to a frail and fragile belief that one day my "real" father would come and rescue me.    My real father drove a Greyhound bus up the Columbia Gorge from Portland to the Dallas, Oregon.   His bus passed by my grandmother's house in Cascade Locks, sixty miles east of Portland.    I would wait by the roadside for his bus and look at him from afar but he never looked at me, and, perhaps, never knew who I was.    Each time the bus drove away my heart sank deeper into the quagmire of Child Terrorism, the worst kind--that feeling of being unloved, unwanted.
        Each Christmas, I would secretly ask Santa to bring me back my father.   I held fast to that hope even though I knew it was virtually impossible, virtually improbable.   But a child has more faith than most adults.     A child believes with an intensity that shames most adults.    

         My father never came.   I was 21 years old when I approached him.  I was scarred and hardened by then, as many children are as a result of their upbringing.    And, I made a vow as a result.  That was to be the father to my children that my father wasn't to me.   In a way, perhaps, the brutality of my own childhood was a gift for my children.   If I have done little in this world in other areas of my life, I have succeeded in being a good father to my children...I have been there for my children all their lives, whether they liked it or not.     In comparison to my father's absence, I have achieved much in retribution for his defects.
         And, my children are my best of friends.   The Christmas wish I begged for as a child has come true, not for me, but for my children.    In a bizarre way, the greatest gift I have today is not the friendship of my father I yearned for with such passion as a child, but the great friendship of my children, and, their children.
         I note with great pride that my children have wonderful relations with their children.    They treat their children with a respect that borders on anarchy at times--allowing their children to express feelings and attitudes I might have quashed as a parent.  But, today, children's feelings are treated with a respect that requires incredible patience and management.
        I come from the old school where the parent rules.   Today, the trend is to "rule by committee," with children having greater rights and larger Voices in where they go, what they do, and how they do it.   

       I've learned from my children about the Christmas Gift I longed for as a child.   I've learned they have "their way" as I had "my way" and my wife had "her way" to express love.    It means that the roots of love remain solid, but the branches spread in slightly different directions.
        The Rockefeller Christmas Tree lighting ceremony is only a reminder to me that the great Sentinel of Seasonal Vigilance is alive and well.
         While we all may hold our different viewpoints about Christmas, we cannot deny the joy and belief it or a different seasonal custom brings to a child.   I wonder if I hadn't kept believing that one day my father would come at Christmas, whether I might have passed on to my children my belief in them.
         Great good can come out of bad events.   When we learn from the errors of others we grow.    I have grown stronger as a human being because of my relationship with my children--and, that relationship is strong today because of the lack of one with my father, and his failure to bring me a Christmas gift.     So, I have given what he didn't give me to my children.

       Tonight, when the Christmas tree is lighted in Rockefeller Plaza, each of you will have a chance to scoff or embrace the idea of Christmas.   It isn't about us.   It is about children's beliefs, children's dreams.
        We forget how important that is.   In America, 22 percent of the population is under 15.   There is still room for belief among them.   But, in the Congo, 46 percent are under 15, in Rwanda, 50 percent are under 15.   Afghanistan has 40 percent of its population under 15.   Vietnam has 37 percent of its people under 15 and Japan's percentage is 17, El Salvador, 41, and Costa Rica, 35.  (See children population chart)
         The world is ripe with children.    We forget that in Iraq 44 percent of the 24 million people in that land are under the age of 15.   That's a startling number because it means that children in that land have great dreams, many unfulfilled, that can be shaped and directed.
          The great shaping of any child's dreams is to remind the child that life is about "giving" and not about "taking."   Christmas, and other holidays of a similar nature, give to the children.   Often, the greatest gift a child can receive is a hug or love from a parent, a grandparent, a loved one.
           America is trying to give the children of Iraq a special present this year--freedom.    Lots of people in this nation and others berate America's attempt to free the children of the land to enjoy what other children in more-developed nations enjoy.
           That is to be free of the Beast of Terror.

         Children who live under the shadow of tyranny and oppression have their Christmas tree lights snuffed out before they can light them.   When someone else holds the switch to the electricity of freedom, and forces others to do what they say or they won't give them light, the child learns to cower and serve the Beast.
           Freedom from the Beast teaches the child that he or she can make his or her own electricity, has a right to flip on the switch, and, a greater right to keep it lighted once it is on.
           The great gift of freedom is not an easy one to open.
           It took me nearly a lifetime to realize that the pain and anguish of my childhood was a gift I gave to my children in love and appreciation of them.   I turned the bad into good.
           Tyranny and oppression can be turned into freedom and liberty, but not without symbols of such freedom and liberty standing tall, forming beacons for all to see.
          Sure, many may think the two-ton tree lighting in Rockefeller Center is just about the "commercialism" of Christmas, and rail and attack it as a "Christian" event ruled by White Angle Saxon Males.    That's the Beast of Terror view.   It seeks to find the bad in the good, to shower beauty with ugliness, as is the nefarious way of the Beast.
          But, there is another view.   That is the one the Sentinels of Vigilance offer.   They suggest the 30,000 lights that shine are lights of hope and belief targeted at a child's lonely heart, a child's sad heart.
         Perhaps this giant tree and its gleaming lights mean more about faith than disbelief, more about safety and security than crass commercialism and religious bigotry.
          I can only speak for myself.

         For years I wished upon every Christmas Tree I saw for the gift of my father.   He never came.
          But, I was transposed to become what he wasn't--at least with my children.
          Adults who denounce the "Spirit of Christmas" such as a tree lighting might well take another look at the hearts of children.   If there is a place for them to wish upon, to seek something better in their lives, do we have the right to crush those dreams and abuse those beliefs with our caustic attitudes?
          A Parent of Vigilance will see the 30,000 lights igniting tonight reaching the children of the world--those in Belize, Japan, Iraq, the Congo--as well as here at home.    They will put aside their own prejudices for a moment and sit with their children and ask them what their "wish list" is....not the "wish list" just for "things" but the "wish list" deep in their heart.
          Had my father asked me that question, I would have simply said:  "A hug."
          Light your Vigilance Christmas Tree.   Believe in belief, no matter what shape or form it takes, as long as it benefits the Children's Children's Children.
          You can start that process by taking the Pledge of Vigilance and believing it with the heart of a child.

Dec. 2--Let's Not Talk About It...It's Too Scary...Too Ugly

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