NEWTOWN, Conn. — Newtown celebrated Christmas amid piles of snow-covered teddy bears, long lines of stockings, and heaps of flowers as volunteers manned a 24-hour candlelight vigil in memory of the 20 children and six educators gunned down at an elementary school just 11 days before the holiday.
Well-wishers from around the country showed up Christmas morning to hang ornaments on a series of memorial Christmas trees while police officers from around the state took extra shifts to direct traffic, patrol the town, and give police here a break.

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While I am NOT religious but secular, I keep trying to take that part of Christianity which is humane for my own purpose driven life. I fail often but I keep trying to take seriously the words of Christ which addresses itself to that. I am NOT about religion certainly but I AM about treating each other as we would want to be treated. It truly is the key to unlocking the humanity that exists in most and most importantly for our specie's survival. BUT, the Newtown disaster certainly tests most of us who call ourselves civilized. Every time I want to enjoy something in this holiday season, my mind returns to Newtown. I want the cerebral synapses of my assaulted mind to disconnect from this utter barbarity but it cannot. Perhaps, it should not. Like the Holocaust and the other inhumanities that exist in so many parts of the world especially the Middle East, one MUST look to see. Newtown has, I think, become OUR nation's holocaust and we must see it and institute rational methods to at least TRY to prevent it happening again. It begins with us, each and every one of us to spread the good news that it does NOT have to be this way and that we have the power to change it.
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