Richard Franz

Did you go Christmas shopping this year? Did you spend money you have not yet earned on items that probably will not fill anyone’s needs, and will only temporarily satisfy a selfish envy or greed? Do you feel like Christmas is more about spending money than spending time with God and family?

Consumer counseling agencies anticipate a 25 percent increase in the number of people seeking help in January and February. Most of that traffic is driven to their doors by holiday bills that haunt consumers like the ghost of Christmas past.

When tragedy suddenly strikes a home or family, a city or a nation, the people directly affected experience any number of emotions, including unbridled sadness, hurt, loss, emptiness and grief. When the sharp edge of shock and piercing point of pain are slightly numbed by emotional fatigue, it is not abnormal for anger and resentment to enter people’s hearts. Anger from the devastating loss seeks to focus on or attack something. Whose fault is it? Who is blame for such an atrocity? Counselors see these transitions as part of the normal grieving process.

Memorial Day, declared officially by the United States Congress in 1971 as a national holiday, is observed in the U.S. on the last Monday of May. It is a day on which Americans commemorate the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. The observance of this day began soon after the end of the American Civil War and was initially known as Decoration Day—a day when people would decorate the graves of the fallen soldiers.