Gladys Bliss and her family have the right idea for Christmas.

Tuesday, December 26, 2000

Gladys Bliss and her family have the right idea for Christmas.

On Christmas Day, they will be serving dinner to strangers and other lonely people.

It will be the third straight year in which Mrs. Bliss and her family will host a Christmas Day celebration for those who have none of their own.

True, the Salvation Army will hold its own community dinner on Christmas Day and a noble effort it is.

But, Mrs. Bliss and family and friends are doing something they don’t have to do.

They’re doing something that most other people would disdain.

It’s an all-expenses-paid, come-as-you-are, but-call-first Christmas Day dinner with turkey and ham and all the trimmings at the Mower County Senior Center on Monday.

While other families will be celebrating their own private Christmases at home, this family will be reaching out to those less fortunate.

They are doing it, in part, as a memorial to Mrs. Bliss’s beloved son, Peter Klein, who died in 1998 after injuries suffered in an ATV accident.

So, the pain they still suffer for their loss of a loved one has created an opportunity to spread joy to others … just like Peter did for them.

If anyone has the right idea about how to suppress thoughts of an overly commercialized Christmas, it is Gladys Bliss and her family.

They’ve got the right idea about Christmas.