Glen Rock Gazette from Glen Rock, New Jersey • A10

25 Thoughts For The New Year Letters to The Gazette The Forum for Borough Citizens Out Of The Woods Offering The First Gift Of Christmas Being busy isn't the same thing as being productive. Many of life's greatest possessions are intangible. If we give our children everything, we deprive them of aspirations. Throw away bad experiences, but save the lessons. Physical presence is not the same as being there.

The danger of shooting from the hip is hitting yourself in the foot. A homeless person wasn't at one time. Paradise in not a place; it's a state of mind. If you believe you you won't. Trying to be excellent at everything leads to mediocrity.

Closing your eyes to problems don't make them disappear. Don't think every battle has winner and many times there are just losers. Gifts are not a substitute for caring. Live everyday as if it were your last. One day it will be.

SUBMITTED BY FRANK K. SONNEBERG AND ALAN D. HEMBROUGH, THE AUTHORS OF THE NEW BOOK, IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS: OVER 500 THOUGHT-PROVOKING LESSONS TO INSPIRE A RICHER LIFE. Today, when we are all living at warp speed, it's too easy to lose perspective, too easy to forget about the things that matter, and too easy to lose sight of the priceless things that we once treasured. What we can do is put on the brakes, take a deep breath, consider the values that are most important to us, and improve our lives.

Below, are 25 thoughts for living a rich, ethical, rewarding life in the new year and beyond. If you don't pass your values onto your kids, someone else will. When you run out of money -stop buying. Fun shouldn't be confused with happiness. Some people don't communicate.

They just take turns talking. Helping people too much only makes them helpless. If work isn't fun, you're not playing on the right team. It's the moments in life, not the days that we remember. Practice doesn't make perfect if you're doing it wrong.

Those living on the edge never fear falling off. Every successful partnership is a 6060 proposition. If you place all of your eggs in one basket, any fall will be a messy one. By Forrest Jones correspondent In the Christian tradition Advent is the season when we prepare ourselves for Christmas. It is easy to undervalue the needful efforts of preparation and focus on what we are to receive on Christmas Day.

However, sometimes the true gifts are what we receive in the humblest and simplest acts of preparation. This is the story of such a gift. Each Advent, our church holds a pageant in which the children of the parish act out the first Christmas. The preschool children enter first. They march in, holding golden paper stars, and sing Little Town of Bethlehem." A few actually sing, but most just stare in wide-eyed astonishment at finding themselves at the front of the church before so many attentive grown-ups.

Mary and Joseph enter next. After the nasty innkeepers turn them away and the good innkeepers give them room in a stable, they take their station at the front of the church, in the center of the chancel, the swaddled child within a rude crib before them. Then the kindergartners enter as angels (complete with halos) with the first-graders as archangels (fancier halos and wings). Following the passage of the little angels, shepherds from Starting 2002 Unresolved Letters to the Editor Policy Letters may be edited and may be published, reproduced, or distributed in print, electronic, or other forms. The views and opinions expressed in Letters to the Editor are not necessarily those of The Glen Rock Gazette or its affiliates.

Submissions should be typed, double-spaced, and signed and include a phone number for verification. Letters which cannot be verified or are anonymous will not be published. Not all letters will necessarily be published. Please send your letters to the editor by e-mail to glenrocknorthjersey.com, by fax to 201-612-4331, or by mail to 41 Oak Street, Ridgewood, NJ 07450. BELIEVE ME NANCY RUBENSTEIN the fourth through sixth grades enter wearing colorful robes and carrying tall crooks.

They encounter the Angel Gabriel, who gives them glad tidings and sends them to see the miracle within the Bethlehem stable. The shepherds proceed hence, leading the second- and third-graders, who portray their sheep. Finally, a few fourth-graders enter lashed together as camels (one as a head, one as a hump), together with their drivers and the Three Kings of the Orient in their rich robes and bejeweled turbans. The entrance of the sheep is the highlight of the service. Dressed in heavy fleece costumes that cover them from their heads (complete with pink-lined, floppy ears) to their stubby tails and down to their feet, the children thunder down the center aisle of the church on all fours, baaing loudly all the way and dodging the crooks of their herders.

Of course, behind the charming spectacle of the procession of elaborately costumed children lies the work of platoons of parents who have been keeping watch over their flocks all morning. These parents must maintain some order among the keyed-up children while they dress each child in his or her costume in time for the class to make its entrance in the pageant. At the pageant this past Sunday, a friend of mine was working with the second grade, helping her son and the other children in his class to dress in their fleece outfits. In addition to catching and costuming the rambunctious children, the adults had to make sure that each child had brought a pair of white athletic socks to wear over the hands, the final detail that completed the sheep's clothing. One of these children had lost her father in the Sept.

11 attack on the World Trade Center. While the boys in the class went wild waiting their turns to be dressed, this little girl had sat, very quiet and still, drawing pictures at a table along the side of the room. Finally, when it was the little girl's turn to be dressed, my SEE WOODS ON PAGE 12 We all agree that the New Year is always an overrated event. First, the weather usually wrecks, or at least dampens plans with snow or ice except for those sticking close to home. Second, we believe it should be perfectly acceptable to have no plans for New Year's Eve, but the fact is that most people look askance if you haven't planned for a gala clock-watch for midnight, Dec.

31. Third, there are all those resolutions we're all supposed to be making, starting right after we party on New Year's Eve. The first resolution should be obvious: Don't party so hard. The rest of the resolutions list is totally depressing: Lose weight, eat healthier foods, exercise and give up whatever self-involved indulgences you may be enjoying. Going along with those resolutions, January magazines will all feature sure-fire diets to encourage your resolve.

You can't escape them. They always follow the November and December magazines that are packed with irresistible recipes, all loaded with calories. That's the plan: to ensure that we get to the diet plans we always find in the January issues, which are followed, of course, by cake, cookie and other confection Glen Rock Gazette" Published at 41 Oak Street (entrance on Walnut Street) Ridgewood, NJ 07450 Editorial Office: 201-612-7942 Fax: 201-612-4331 Send e-mail to: glenrocknorthjersey.com Sharon Puser, Publisher Susan Leigh Sherrill, Editor Cindy Probert, Managing Editor Ellen Zitis, Advertising Sales Manager recipes for Valentine's Day in the February issue. Then in March we return to denial for Lent, followed by Easter and Passover with traditional, high calorie stuff. You can't win this game.

But, back to New Year's Eve. After our celebratory evening, we are expected to begin our litany of personal denials in a miserable month of shorter days, longer nights, snow, sleet and ice, making all of us even grumpier and in serious need of comfort food. And comfort food is not diet food. So, what will we, personally, do? We'll have dinner and a great evening with friends, welcoming in the new year together, followed by a day of football-frenzied bowl games and a lot of eating whatever we want. Life is a treadmill of repetitious events.

We're breaking through, making absolutely no resolutions and planning no self-denial in the coming winter months. How's that for a beginning for 2002? Stephen Borg President North Jersey Jeannette B. Dowd President, Classified Telecenter Community Glenn Garvie Vice President, Production Newspapers George Miller Vice President, Circulation the Weeky Division of Nancy Rubenstein Executive Editor Mdta Gup.