Christmas is always a "hoot" with my Florida family, and this year is no different, except the trip down here was less eventful than last year's trek. Last year, I started to Florida just after an ice storm, and slid off the half inch of ice that covered the new four-lane highway. It happened about four miles from I-55, at Hayti. A local farmer had apparently decided to go the wrong way on the newly designed road, and I saw his pickup truck heading slowly toward me, slithering to and fro on the unsalted ice track that was highway 412. One had a choice, go slowly into the snow -covered ditch/median or be knocked off the frozen highway rink like a hockey puck. One had time to choose the ditch. There I was, straddling the ditch, car loaded with clothes and Christmas presents, and realizing that I was stuck. Then it dawned on me, I was driving a Ford Explorer with automatic four- wheel drive, with two more powerful "four-wheeling" options, "high" and "low". The motor was still running, so why not give it a try? I put the car in gear, gave it a little gas, and felt the four- wheel drive kick in! The powerful Ford Explorer steadily climbed out of the ditch and onto the eastbound highway. I could not believe my luck: one, I was not injured, two, the car withstood the ditching, and, three I easily drove out of the ditch. It was the first time that I had called on the four-wheel drive in an emergency, and it worked!

I drove, cautiously and slowly, past a couple of stranded 18-wheelers, and finally made it to the drivable I-55, and toward a beautiful 2004 Christmas..

Nothing had happened to me on the annual trip this year, until about 20 miles from Tupelo, Mississippi, when a large expensive looking motor home, with a small car in tow, turned over on the highway, not more than a quarter of a mile before me. The wreck blocked both eastbound lanes of Highway 78. Traffic quickly piled up behind me, and I was blocked. After listening to the irritated CB chatter of the truckers, I decided to wait twenty minutes, by the clock, for the EMT units, and the wreckers, to arrive. Suddenly, with lights flashing, and piercing sirens demanding right of way, the EMT units and fire trucks arrived, doing Daytona 500's down each eastbound shoulder.

The CB "reporters" informed the waiting, ever more impatient, trucking community, and the rest of us with communication equipment, that there were no serious injuries. It was then that I decided to wait for the four or five wreckers on the scene to drag the overturned motor home at least far enough across the highway to open one usable lane, but it didn't happen, soon enough for me. It was time to take a detour.

Northeast Mississippi is quite familiar to me, so I once again made use of the Explorer's four-wheel drive, and managed to drive down and up a challenging median embankment. Once on the westbound side, I took a short detour, using roads that were familiar to me from attending various fraternity brothers' shindigs, and their eventual weddings.

Once I was back on the four-lane highway from Memphis to Birmingham, I gradually lapsed into one of my usual long distance driving reveries (that‚'s like being in a trance, boys, without affecting one's driving skills).

You get to wondering? Why do families get together at Christmas? Why is it that we "go home for Christmas," when our old homes, and those who lived there no longer exist? What makes brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and dislocated grandparents, yearn to be with each other, and with the families‚ ever-growing crop of children and teenagers? What is it that causes us to drive a thousand miles, or brave the frustrating, and sometimes dehumanizing (treating a gentleman as if he were a member of the unwashed herd) complexities of air travel, just to spend a few days with at least some of our "folks?"

My two older sisters were for the longest time the only two of the four of us who lived away from Hornersville. My late sister, Helen (nicknamed Ladybug, "Lade," lived in St. Louis, and she and her children rarely missed coming home for Christmas. She had six wonderful children, who filled our home with joy and chaos. And more often than not, my oldest, and only remaining, sister (now still kicking at age 87) and her husband and two challenging, yet lovable, children, were also frequent Christmas "returnees." My late brother Lonnie, and his wife Jean, (who lives in Florida now) and their wild to the core little boys lived near us in Hornersville. But still, Christmas was a special day for them, because of those who came home for Christmas. Today, there are three basic "tribal" locations for Thanksgiving and Christmas: St. Louis/ Central Illinois, Central Florida, and the Madison/Milwaukee/New Berlin "Fest" settings.

Nowadays, I spend Christmas, and many other days (weeks, in total) in Florida with my sister (in-law) Jean and with her family, David Burdin, Sarah Kinchen Burdin, Taylor (now of Notre Dame University), Caroline 15, Mason 11, (a David Burdin clone, and that's a good thing), and Hattie Lou (named for great-grandmothers Hattie Kinchen and Louise Branum). Hattie Lou is age 5, and she is without a doubt the most beautiful, talented, brilliant, and sweetest little manipulator of an old bachelor uncle, the world has ever seen. She is also not the kind of 5-year-old that the two teenagers in her family can kick around. She recently came to me for help, saying "Mason and I are only 'maids' for Taylor and Caroline." She furthered complained to me that, "It's Hattie Lou bring me this, go get that, and what did you do to my DVD player?"

HL and I "invited" Taylor, the college boy, and Caroline, the resident teenager, to a "counseling session" (HL, age five, going on thirty, had "no problem" with Mason, age 11). HL told the teenagers in concise clipped, and forceful, but measured, speech of her complaint. The teenage oppressors listened, and promptly disagreed, but each side finally began to see the other's point of view. Then there were hugs, and a fragile ceasefire followed.

Why do we want to "go home for Christmas?" Maybe it‚s because of the children, and the unspoken reassurance that no matter how many times we grieve the loss of loved ones, it's at Christmas, through the shinning eyes of our babies, and the aspiring dreams of our teenagers, that we begin to understand. Life has its cycles, and in the end, "it will be all right." Happy New Year!

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.