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sls a ha HES Rash of break-ins at five Regional works buildings Officials with the Durham Region Works department are concern- ed over what appears to be an increase in the number of break-ins at Works depots in the Region. | A report prepared by the department indicates there have been five such - break-ins during the past couple of months, with the most serious one tak- ing place in mid- November at the depot in Scugog Township at the corner of Durham Roads 21 and 23. Thieves broke through several windows and at least two locked doors to bay and stock room. Stolen was an air com- pressor, two chain saws and the personal tools belonging to the mechanic who works at the depot, all valued at more than $16,000. In addition, the thieves made off with a crew cab vehicle which was later found badly damaged in heavy bush on Regional Road. It cost the Region some $3500 to repair the crew cab. To date, there have / been no arrests in con- get access to the repair ' nection with this incident. At the Ajax depot, November 10, thieves cut a hole through a chain link fence and made off with a small diesel engine valued at $5000. Late in October, the Consumers Drive depot was burlarized as thieves stole the rear doors off a "van and a ram-set gun and attachments. On November 23, the scale house at the Scugog land- fill site was entered, and although contents of a fil- ing cabinet were dumped on the flor, there was nothing reported missing. The most recent break- in took place at the Ajax depot December 2, when a pick-up tire and rim were stolen with a value of about $200. The region is beefing up the security fences around the depots, but a report on the incidents notes that security fences have not proved to be a deterrent in the PORT PERRY STAR -- Mon. December 24, 1984 -- 5 t e PORT PERRY STAR CO LITITED 235 QUEEN STREET £0 801 90 PORT PERRY ONTARIO LO8 INO (416) 983.738) J. PETER HVIDSTEN Publisher Advertising Manager Member of the J.B. MCCLELLAND Canadian Community Newspaper Association Editor and Ontario Community Newspaper Association. w Published every Tuesday by the rt Pe Ltd. CATHY ROBB rry Star Co. Ltd, Port Perry, Ontario. News & Features Authiocized as second class mail by the Post Office Department, Ottawa, and for cash payment of postage in cash. WADIAN COMMUN ¥ , A A r Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Ne q+ o% Subscription Rate: In Canada $15.00 per year. Elsewhere $45.00 per year. Single copy 35° W 1) SPA Ens a330She © COPYRIGHT -- All layout and composition of advertisements produced by the advertising department of the Port Perry Star Company Limited are protected under copyright and may not be reproduced without the written permission of the publishers. past. Miracle and Magic of Christmas by Dr. George H. Moore Presbyterian Church in Canada In the Gospel of St. Luke there are seven little words that overflow with magic: IT CAME TO PASS IN THOSE DAYS. They are so familiar and are bound up with memories of Christmas and all its en- joyments. And yet the magic is changing; something of its real power, its vital meaning is slipping from us. The truth is ---- we have come to expect too lit- tle from Christmas. There came into the world that first Christmas something determined to change the whole of human life: we ask of it today only to change our living rooms -- set a few days alight with gaiety and giv- ing. Given that -- we are content to let it be forgot- ten within a very few days. If we want to find the real meaning of Christmas again in our day -- we must set it not only against the background of our own homes and our own families. We must take again the simple story and set it against the background of those pictures on our TV screens that have become almost unbearably familiar every day. Pictures of wretched homeless people -- no longer belonging anywhere in particular: unhappy - wretched - starving people whose bones are being held together only by the skin that covers them. Dispossessed people shuffling along with shapeless bundles and a dread of the future. People of Ethiopia and many other places in search of food -- and see- ing their little ones dying in their arms. For that ---- humanly speaking = is what the story is all about. That is what Christ was born to change. That is, in fact, where He started. Think again of the story of that mysterious yet wonderful birth. A simple artisan and his wife have a baby in just such circumstances and then have to flee for their lives. Nothing is coloured or heightened. Nothing is emphasized or underlined. It is left to the understan- ding of men and women to fill in the circumstances from their own knowledge and experience. The government decree breaking into every lit- tle home ---- riding roughshod over personal and family affairs. The wearisome journey of many, many miles for the sole purpose of being registered in a general census ordered by the authorities. Their despair in arriving to find no room anywhere ---- on- ly the bare outhouse, and an absence of of even a modieum of comfort or anything that could help. It is a mdoern enough story in all conscience! But if that were all there were to it we would still be without faith and without hope. It would be no more than another typical example of the problem burn- ing at the heart of the present day. BUT IT IS NOT! There is much more to it. And that much more is not just the magic of the happiest of all festivals. It is the fact of the Christian Gospel. The fact that here -- where man himself fails -- the inconceivable and unbelievable happened; history became the vehicle of the eternal -- the AB- SOLUTE was clothed with flesh and blood. In that year when quietly and unobtrusively God stepped into our world, He neither gave nor sent. HE CAME. There was no spectacular exhibition of divine power. No coup d'etat. No summoning of legions of angels. Only a Baby born in a manger. That is the Magic and Miracle of Christmas ---- God came into our world that way. He came and He loved ---- not safely apart - not in happy and special conditions -- but in face of all the pressures of every day, the strain and the stress of ordinary life. He came and He loved in the face of real evil ---- spiritual blindness -- the indifference of power, selfishness and perverted cruelty so akin to what is going on in our world today. In the face of human grief and suffering -- feeling them as we feel them -- He loved and He triumphed. And that is but the beginning of the story of His triumph ---- for that triumph lies not in His human life alone -- but in the lives in which he is born again in every generation. That is what matters for us wday ---- and as the lights go on in our homes and in our towns -- and the gifts begin to pile up at the foot of the Christmas tree and Christmas music rings out across the land -- that is what we shall celebrate. Human life -- our daily life -- can by the power and love of God be (Turn to page 6) bill smiley CHRISTMAS PAST AND PRESENT Like practically everything else in the frantic 20th century, Christmas is vastly overdone. A day that was, for our ancestors, a simple observance of the birth of Christ combined with a family get-together of reasonable jollity, has grown to thc proportions of a nightmare in which shopping for gifts, exchange of cards, Christmas entertainments, high-powered adver- tising and a steady and relentless stream of so-called "Christmas" music make up the accumulation of horrors. In the good old days, the family rose early, and went to church, where the parson gave them a two-hour ap- petizer. Then they went home and took a nip of something to take off the chill. While the servants were sweating in the kitchen, preparing the vast dinner to come, they took a bit of lunch. Then the ladies set off to distribute food parcels to the poor, while the men put their tails to the fire and went after that chill again. That's your ancestors I'm talking about. Mine were among the people the ladies were taking the food to. I can still see them kicking the pigs under the bed when her ladyship came in, tugging their forelocks, scraping their feet, and saying "f'ank yer, milady, f'ank yer, mum" as she pulled one of the geese that had died of disease, and one of last year's bottles of blackberry brandy, which and turned vinegary, out of her basket. Today, of course, my ancestor's descendants will eat turkey on Christmas Day, until they bear a resemblance to purple pigs, while the descendants of milady, who have managed to hang on to the old home only by taking tourists through at a shilling a shot, will be dining meagrely in the only room of the big house they can afford to heat, on a nice bit of brisket and some brussel sprouts. And serves them right. However, that's not what I started out to say, but I can't remember what it was, anyway. Oh, yes, about the old days and today. Well, despite all the wailing and throwing of hands in the air at the paganism and com- mercialism surrounding our Christmas today, I wouldn't trade it for the old-fashioned one of a hundred years ago. And don't forget I said "surrounding" our Christmas. Sure our kids believe in Santa Claus. Sure our pre-Christmas preparations are getting more and more hectic and more and more subject to commer- cialism. But our kids grow out of Santa Claus, without any dire effects. And we get over the pre-Christmas panic and celebrate the day with just as much reverence and just as much family fun as ever our ancestors did. I'll warrant our youngsters know just as much, and maybe more, about the story of Christmas, and the com- ing of the Christ child, as their counter-parts of a hun- dred years ago. Mine do, anyway, thanks to their Sun- day School teachers And I'll bet we're not half as smug and selfish, despite our much-touted materialism, as our Victorian great-grandfathers were, sitting on their fat rumps by the fire on Christmas Day, and letting the poor worry about themselves. On this coming Christmas Day, in our town, the Barn will be out in the cold, playing for the old people and shut-ins. Groups of ladies and men from a dozen different organizations will be scurrying about with vast baskets of food and treats for the needy. And the needy are pretty few and far between days, simply use we have a whole lot mqre social conscience than our ancestors had. Outside that warm, cosy, jolly Pickwickian Christmas of a hundred years ago lay a world of cold and hunger and degradation. We wouldn't let it exist today. So don't let the worry-warts spoil your Christmas, with their perpetual complaining that Christmas is be- ing paganized. Nothing can sully Christmas, because Christmas is in your heart, in the simple story on that day, in the shining eyes of a child, in the loveliness of the carols. Yes, and it is in the Christmas tree, and the gay win- dows, and the coloured lights against the snow and the perspiring Santa Claus at the Christmas concert, and the card from a friend you haven't seen in years. Just gird up your loins, plunge into your shoping, enjoy the giving of gifts, run yourself away into debt, be happy in the family reunion, go to church on Christmas Day, stay away from the hard stuff, and don't be a pig with the turkey, and you won't go far wrong. y ~ TT -- iow LL a