Christmas is a time of family. Upon moving to Valdosta, I found myself faraway from my folks here, as a young man, before marrying and starting a family of my own.

• My first Valdosta Christmas came after my first Valdosta Thanksgiving. And these two days couldn’t have been more different.

On that Thanksgiving, a newspaper co-worker invited all of the reporters to her house in Thomasville for dinner with her parents. It was a fine meal and a fine day.

That Christmas was my day to work at the paper, and all of the other reporters had returned to their family homes out of town and out of state. No big deal, I thought on my first Christmas away from home, surely there’s some restaurant open featuring a Christmas Day special. If there was, I couldn’t find it. Having been here only a couple of months, I hadn’t discovered the Waffle House yet. My first Valdosta Christmas meal was a bag of Dorito’s from a vending machine.

Yet, that wasn’t Valdosta’s fault. That was my fault. I’d already learned at Thanksgiving and in the weeks leading up to Christmas that Valdosta was a hospitable place. I just hadn’t let my Christmas situation be known. Or found a Waffle House.

I felt a little sorry for myself but was thankful for the blessing of enough change for a bag of Dorito’s and a can of Coke.

• Another Valdosta Christmas was an experience many will remember. On Christmas Eve 1995, an electrical transformer was sabotaged and subsequently knocked out power throughout Valdosta and Lowndes County. Not just houses, but street lights and traffic lights were gone, as well as Christmas lights and Christmas trees. Off-duty police, firefighters and other emergency personnel left their homes and families on Christmas Eve to stand with flashlights in darkened intersections directing traffic. Power company workers were out in force.

With an early Christmas Eve deadline, The Valdosta Daily Times had already gone to press with the Christmas morning edition, but I was the next day’s on-duty Christmas reporter, so I began my research that night, driving to the Valdosta Police Department and the fire department, talking to people directing traffic, and utility workers.

As the evening wore on, electricity returned to most city and county residents. For some, the power would be out through Christmas and a few days longer, but, for most folks, it was a temporary black-out on a Christmas Eve. Good thing Rudolph has that shiny nose, and a good thing we have so many emergency personnel and utility workers willing to sacrifice their holidays to help others.

• That same Christmas Eve has a personal significance as well.

It is the first Christmas I spent with my future wife and the boy who would become my oldest son. I had been preparing to go to her family’s house when the lights went out in our part of Georgia. I traveled onto her family’s house, explained that I had to do a little leg work for the story to be written on Christmas Day for the Dec. 26 edition. If they’d have me, I told my future in-laws, I’d be back, but this was the nature of a newspaper person’s job — sometimes you’re late for supper, and sometimes you miss supper all together, even on Christmas Eve.

And, I thought to myself, if that’s not understood now, well, this whole relationship won’t work anyway. But she did understand as did her family.

When the scouting for the next day’s story was finished, I returned to their house, where the power had returned, and a hot bowl of chili was waiting for me. A short time later, preparing to leave, my truck wouldn’t start, and the family offered me a place to sleep on their couch. I spent Christmas morning with them and watched as the boy who would one day be my son opened what Santa Claus had brought him. A great Christmas!

• Several Christmases ago was a tough time. My wife’s paternal grandmother passed away in late November after going to the hospital at Thanksgiving. With so many little children around, the mood was lightened but there was still the sadness of that empty place at the table that first holiday after the passing of a loved one.

But the day after that Christmas, a child was born in the family. A fine baby boy. My youngest nephew. That Christmas, we remembered that families are renewed and that a child is a promise of hope. It was a fitting reminder of the meaning of Christmas.

Merry Christmas, Valdosta, and thank you for Christmases past, Christmas present and Christmases future.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.