Thank you for your reflections about your experience at Christmas time.  Christmas does seem to be a time for reflection on the passing of time and of persons.  When my siblings and I were young, there were thirty-four persons, counting our parents, in the generation just above ours.  As I entered my forties, I was aware that that generation was aging and passing; when my mother died a few years ago, they were all gone; and my siblings and cousins have taken their place: we're the older generation, and some of us are gone, too.  It's important to appreciate each other while we can, to tell the stories, to record them and pass them down.  I love the genealogies of Jesus that we find in Matthew and Luke, because they convey the importance of family and roots.