So, as this is Christmas week, we're having a slightly shorter episode today, but I have

something that I think all of our listeners will enjoy. Christmas was the big holiday that Walt

celebrated at home. When he was growing up, mainly in Kansas City and Marcelline, Missouri,

his family didn't have a lot of extra money for the

holidays. Walt's father often had high hopes for succeeding at business, but his business plans

rarely panned out the way he wanted them to. As a result, his older brother, Roy, was often the one

who made sure that Walt and his younger

sister Ruth had something under the tree other than practical items from their parents,

such as clothes.

For Christmas and birthdays, Walt explained, now my brother Roy was the one who would always

see that Ruth and I had a toy.

Roy didn't have much money, but by gosh, he always saw we had a toy.

Roy always saw we had little things like that.

Roy was one of the kindest fellows I've ever known in my life to other people.

As an adult, it was this type of generosity

that drew Walt back into the Christmas spirit each year.

In the 1940s, he explained that Christmas,

well, is it time when the imagination is more sprightly

than at other periods of the year.

Christmas seems to release even the most solemn of us from the

Scrooge realism that occasionally besets all of us. It is natural, of course, that I should think

of Christmas in terms of imagination, for imagination is my business. But the imagination

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