I always thought Christmas Eve was the best part of Christmas.

For most of the last 18 years, with a few exceptions, I have gone to midnight Mass. And the few I've missed, I usually managed to find the Christmas Eve Mass from St. Peter's in Rome on television. Well, this year I'm not getting to Mass and my television isn't hooked up. I'm sitting here listening to George Strait singing "I Can Still Make Cheyenne" as I think about Christmases past and future.

[caption id="attachment_710" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Christmas Eve in Rome"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/334226720_45b2ce4175.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-710" title="334226720_45b2ce4175" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/334226720_45b2ce4175-300x261.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="261" /></a>[/caption]

This has been a pretty miserable Christmas in some respects. My children are thousands of miles away -- seven time zones tonight and seven and 12 within 24 more hours when Pauline and her family return to Indonesia. It was wonderful to get to spend last Christmas with them in Virginia, but this one is more typical of what things will be like in the near future.

Our only Christmas decoration this year is a wreath on the front of the house. We put most of our holiday decorations up for sale when we moved here, and if we're going to have a tree next year, we'll have to buy one.

I turned off my iPod and switched to the Christmas channel on satellite radio just in time to hear the Beach Boys singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in my ceiling speakers.

You know you're old when you remember when the Beach Boys were boys. Heck, how about just when they were all alive.

For some reason, I have been remembering Christmas 1971 lately. My parents and my siblings went on a trip to Russia and I was home alone. My friends Mick Curran and Christine Worth also were home with their families away, and I remember that the three of us got together at Mick's house and did a Christmas dinner.

I remember almost none of the details. I was 22 that Christmas, younger than my children are now, and I'm pretty sure it was the first Christmas that I didn't spend with my family.

There were plenty more of those, especially in my 30s as I moved west.

In fact, there were three in a row -- 1986-88 -- in Colorado and Reno when I spent the holiday completely alone. One of the strangest Christmases I remember was 1990 -- my first in California -- because just two weeks before Christmas, I survived an automobile accident that I probably shouldn't have survived. The passenger side of my two-seater car was crushed almost flat. I walked away from it.

Yeah, I've had some good Christmases and some that were less than memorable.

But as long as there are people I love -- and people who love me -- there will be some good ones.

Maybe I'll hook up the television after all and see if I can catch midnight mass from the Vatican.