It was an unthinkable tragedy: all the male children under two years of age slaughtered by sword bearing soldiers carrying out the decree of an awfully insecure ruler called Herod. Wailing and crying could be heard from one corner of the little town to the other. Mothers refused to be comforted. Blood from innocent babies who had never raised a fist to any tyrant flowed through Bethlehem’s streets. The little town known as the House of Bread now was a river of blood. That was 2000 years ago.

My wonderful son Robbie is a student at Gordon College in Barnesville. Five days a week he gets into his car and drives the 50 minutes each way to and from his college classes. Those of you who say, “It’s only a piece of paper on the wall,” don’t have a clue of the days of utter drudgery and sacrifice a degree takes. It’s like Pig Pen in the Charlie Brown series in the Sunday comic section who always had a storm cloud over his head.

There’s been a good deal of controversy this past Christmas season regarding the season itself. John Gibson wrote a best-seller whose subject matter is the “war on Christmas.” Some businesses forbade their employees to wish customers “Merry Christmas,” and public schools have secularized the words to religious Christmas carols.

Lately I’ve been told that I live in my own little world. That the way I view stuff is totally different than the way most people do. For instance, some see the glass of water and say it’s half full; others see the glass of water and say it’s half empty. I see the glass of water and wonder why it’s not chocolate milk. Strange, I know, but then again so am I.

Continuing with the story of the descendants of John Tidwell of Virginia, we pick up this week with his grandson, William Tidwell, son of John (Jr.), who moved to Craven County, S.C. with his parents in 1772. William was born about 1765 in Westmoreland County, Va.

Happy aught-six!

With the turning of the calendar come an appraisal of things past and a contemplation of things future.

Somewhere along the line, in addition to all my other responsibilities, I have gained a new one — that of being Dixie Dew’s agent.

When I hear the first words of a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, I brace myself for nonsense.

It isn’t that there aren’t any similarities. The problem is conventional wisdom about Vietnam is usually wrong because the truth has been hidden for decades by a shroud of myths, half-truths and feel-good baloney. In the words of 19th century humorist Samuel Clemmons, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble . . . it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so!”

When I was little, my mom had a proverb for every occasion. Looking back, I can’t help but feel as though someone played on her repression that if you “Sing before breakfast, [you’ll] cry before supper.”

Louise Stanley, my 85-year-old friend, could not make it to church this past first Sunday of the New Year. Did she have transportation? Well, kinda’ sorta’ She has a modern Buick sitting under her garage, but has come to the conclusion that it’s not the wisest thing in the world to drive.

Betcha didn’t think you’d get me, this week huh? Well, it’s time for my annual, “thank you,” “pep talk,” and “how-to-get-your-religion-stuff-in-the-paper” column.

Have you made your New Year's resolutions? Are they realistic? What are you undertaking that will enrich your life?

I heard about a woman who walked into her bathroom and found her husband weighing himself on the bathroom scales, sucking in his stomach.

I received this some months ago and filed it away for future use. Now 2005 is drawing to a close. This would be a good time to talk about where we are headed as a nation.

I don’t wade out into the political waters too much these days. For one thing, I did my time in politics 20 years ago, serving as a vice-president for a local party in the county. For another, politics is a dirty, gritty, thankless business that often results in people being demeaned, defamed, and destroyed. I do vote. I tend to lean to the right of center on most issues and have no hesitation speaking out on moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and the like.

As I look back on my relatively short lifespan on this Earth, there have a few days that have stuck out like a sore thumb - days that I would rather forget. Moving into our new house last month was probably the worst of these days. And how did that day end, you might ask? Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you – I will, though. But you’re gonna have to wait. Before my tale of moving woe begins, let us take a look-see at other not-so-stellar days in the life of yours truly.

This week we’ll launch the series of southside families from the book, “McCall, Tidwell and Allied Families,” written by Ettie Tidwell McCall in 1931. Descendants of this Tidwell family married into many, many families in Fayette, Coweta, Campbell, Meriwether, Pike and other Atlanta metro counties. The more families I read about, the more amazed I became at the number of people (surnames) who are descended from this family.

More often than not, I turn down dates for New Year’s Eve because I have my own tradition that makes that evening one of my favorites of the year.

Dear friends, dear family, dear community,
As usual, we promised ourselves we are not sending Christmas cards to people we see frequently, but then, as we get notes or cards from them, we get cold feet, buy more cards, and send notes after all.

Thirty-one years ago today I got married. It was a Saturday 31 years ago. My 19-year-old bride knew she was marrying a minister, yet little did she or I realize the costs of such a calling. Both she and I learned the days around our wedding.

Traditions can be wonderful. In fact, traditions can give meaning and permanence to life.

Who, to this day, can’t remember their school colors and name the school mascot? Our high school colors were maroon and grey, we were the Indians, and the band played the school song each and every time a touchdown was scored. Even now, after nearly four decades, I can hear the song in my mind.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and everyone knew
The kids gobbled dinner; sweet tea and hot stew.
Smoke detectors hung on the ceilings with care,

Quite by accident, I stumbled across an old book online and opened a whole lot of doors to Southside families.

I had run into a dead end on one of my lines and decided to take a different tack and head in another direction. Since the Tidwells married not only into the Boyd family of Bethany, but also into my Robert Boyd’s family, on a whim, I did a search for Tidwells at Ancestry. Up popped this terrific little book (360-plus pages) which has a number of family surnames very familiar to Fayette, Coweta, Campbell, Carroll, Pike, and Meriwether county researchers.

The whole trip was only supposed to take five minutes, 10 minutes tops.

All he had to do was drive to the grocery store and pick a few items off of the list; egg nog, brown sugar, cranberry sauce and some cinnamon.

Christmas has become so commercialized that it has lost a lot of charm. Over the past few years, I have looked for charm over expensive gifts.

On my computer desktop there is a little boy in white T-shirt and blue pants, shown in profile, hunkered down in that nonchalant squat that young kids and athletes make look easy. Arthritic adults wince at the mere thought of all their weight swung between two knees.

Christmas can be one of the toughest times of the year for not so few people. It can be very sad, depressing, and filled with all kinds of grief. Many people feel a deep sense of guilt because they don’t feel merry, bright, and full of good cheer. They ask themselves, “What’s wrong with me that I am not in the spirit of the season?”

I heard recently that Christmas lists have grown so long that Santa's having to delegate this year. Taking the Southeastern U.S. is Santa's cousin from the South Pole named “Bubba Claus.” Bubba's mission is to deliver toys, but there are a few differences.

Upside-down Christmas trees, removing “Christmas” from the public venue, a public school rewriting the lyrics to “Silent Night” and substituting secular sentiments — what’s next? Well, for starters, how about large evangelical churches just doing away with the Christmas worship service on Christmas Sunday morning altogether?

A child lives in his own wondrous little world, a world most of us grownups have long ago forgotten. But it’s something about the holidays and Christmas, the sights, the sounds, and the smells which pull at even the hardest of hearts and helps us recall distant, long-forgotten memories. Memories which help us to go back — back to that time long ago when Christmas had a whole different meaning for most of us. It was a time when we saw Christmas through the eyes of a child.

I found another little genealogy treasure at the Hogansville auction last month. It’s a book on the life and times of the Rev. Dr. James Clyde Adams, a Methodist minister who served his last years in Heard county and contributed many wonderful things to the development and progress of that county beginning in the 1930s.