Ted Poe: “Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is just around the corner. All throughout America, families will gather to celebrate…”

“Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is just around the corner. All throughout America, families will gather to celebrate the traditions and festivities, and be together and celebrate faith. But there are some American families that won't have their entire family with them this year. There will be an empty chair at their table. That's because their loved ones serve in the U.S. military in lands throughout the world. War at Christmas is not new, and this year will be no exception for many of our warriors that are still on call, still on duty serving America. But there is a way to connect with our troops throughout the world, and it's a project that we are involved in in southeast Texas through the Red Cross and Operation Interdependence. {time} 1010 And here's how it works. It's a way of having young school-age children connect with troops not only in our war zone, but other places in the world where our troops are serving America. It started several years ago when I had the opportunity to go see our troops in the Middle East about this time of the year. Before I left, my staff came up with the idea that maybe I should take some Christmas cards and holiday cards to our troops that were serving overseas. And so they did all the work and they were able to get schoolteachers to get their kids to volunteer to make handmade Christmas cards. I took about 6,000 of those handmade cards by third-, fourth-, and fifth- graders overseas.…”