Flying Home for Christmas

Martha Lunken

Thursday, December 09, 2010 at 09:02 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Inspired by iconic airman Gill Robb Wilson's poetry about flying home for Christmas, the author recounts her "best ever" Christmas Eve flight in the early 1960s, where she experienced the magic of the holiday from a DC-6 cockpit.
She shares a poignant story, "The Midnight Clear," which describes an airline captain compassionately depicting an imagined, perfect hometown view for a blind passenger whose actual village no longer existed.
Both personal memory and the shared tale underscore the profound emotional connection to "home" during the Christmas season and the enduring joy of creating or preserving that special feeling for others.

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I’m essentially a little airplane pilot, and only rarely have I “flown far out across the prairies of the sky to lands my fathers never knew and shores my kindred never trod,” but I think any pilot understands Gill Robb Wilson’s feelings about flying home for Christmas:

I’ve blessed my wings a thousand times
For where they’ve carried me …
But there is a nearer ecstasy!
The wings that bear one home …
The joy of letting down to the place
The heart has never left — the thrill
of returning to the one spot on earth
beloved above all others — home!
And, if it be “Home for Christmas,”
How thrice blessed are my wings.
— Gill Robb Wilson