It\u2019s the night before Christmas and a man walks alone along a solitary Galway alley. The lights in the shops now display gifts that could have been. More likely they will be snatched up in the post-Christmas sales when their value as tokens of love and affection has passed by for another year.<\/p>\n
Whenever I see someone walking alone on Christmas Eve I wonder what their story might be. Is there a loving family somewhere waiting for them? A friend perhaps, or some other welcoming destination just a little further on. Or maybe they are just biding time before Christmas day.<\/p>\n
I wonder because as long as I can remember, Christmas Eve has been my family\u2019s time to get together and enjoy each other\u2019s company. I am so grateful we have always been able to do this. <\/p>\n
So on Christmas Eve I would like to take this opportunity to thank every one of you \u2013 family, friends, acquaintances and passersby \u2013 who, despite another difficult year, have made our lives just that little bit richer and given us the opportunity to do the same.<\/p>\n
Happy Christmas and may the New Year bring hope, joy and happiness to you all.<\/p>\n
Robert & Jennifer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s the night before Christmas and a man walks alone along a solitary Galway alley. The lights in the shops now display gifts that could have been. More likely they will be snatched up in the post-Christmas sales when their value as tokens of love and affection has passed by for another year. Whenever I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1226,1111,374,2431,1428,1262,2706],"class_list":["post-8679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-alley","tag-alone","tag-christmaseve","tag-galway","tag-ireland","tag-solitary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8681,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8679\/revisions\/8681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}