It's an old saw, this celebration of the "holiday season." According to Olbermann who I watch (or, more accurately, podcast), O'Reilly, who I don't, is bothered by all this and, in a way, so am I. Christmas is not my holiday and Chanukah, which is, is just not important enough in my religion to carry as much symbolism as "the season" seems to require. At least in normal times.

But Chanukah is, in part, a story of hope: that we can get through the darkest days and that something better will follow. So this year, maybe, we are slightly more in sync with our fellow Americans, crouched in the fear that comes with such uncertain times and hoping that we can find our way back. It is hard to find more than a religious basis for such hope. The times are bleak and there seems little reason to believe that they can be turned around easily. But we have new president who will take office in less than a month and he appears to be a student of history, particularly of our greatest presidents, and the example of what one of them did to restore the confidence of Americans in an even worse period, seems to have considerable influence on how the new president sees the task ahead. That is a good sign.

It is something to pin some hopes on not because what began on March 4, 1933 magically ended the Depression, and could again revive our very sick economy, because there was no magic involved then, and nothing of the sort can happen today to solve our problems. What happened that day so long ago, and what we can hope for starting on the January 20 to come is a restoration of the view that dedication, intelligence, foresight and a spirit of community bring out the best in us, and not the anti-intellectual, gut instinct and "my way or the highway" sentiments of the recent past.

It is the sense that we will have a president who sees his job not simply as the best way to get re-elected, but to motivate his fellow citizens to solve our problems. The man who will preside over the executive branch of government, is one who will not pine for the opportunity to clear brush, or read books to schoolchildren after being told that an attack on our country is imminent, but one who will mobilize the government to do what it can to repair the damage caused by selfishness and blindness to our collective obligations to one another.

The looking back at the first days of the New Deal has taught us that it was not one program and even several that restored the country's spirit. It was the way the President spoke to the country that reminded Americans of what it really means to be patriotic.

In those turbulent days of March, 1933, with the banks closed because of the serious crisis of faith which had swept the country, the President ended the first of what came to be called his "fireside chats":

It has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from all over the country. I can never be sufficiently grateful to the people for the loyal support that they have given me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all our processes may not have seemed clear to them.

After all, there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system, and it is up to you to support and make it work.

It is your problem, my friends, your problem no less than it is mine.

Together we cannot fail.

Jonathan Alter's new book tells us that the immediate aftermath of that "chat", including the President's

belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime in every part of our nation. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money -- that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes -- the phantom of fear will soon be laid

Americans flocked back to the banks which re-opened to return the cash and gold they had withdrawn, with many commenting on their patriotic duty to do so.

In an article in today's New York Times about the divide between those of us who remember the hope inspired by another President who sought to get our country "moving again" and those born well after that time, some guy named Tom Gorey, from my generation, not the younger set, is quoted to say:

"The Kennedys -- don't get me started... I think they ruined the country"

but the days of such nonsense are ending. "They"---John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward M. Kennedy "ruined the country"? George W. Bush might have rode into the presidency on the votes of such people, just as Ronald Reagan did, but it is not their examples, of "trickle down economics" and endless war that move our country today.

It is hope. The hope of the season. I understand how remote the Kennedy years, much less the Roosevelt ones, seem to those who did not live through them, but I was born seven years after President Roosevelt died, and exactly 19 years to the day after his presidency began. What he meant to this country, and what it means for the administration to come, has been part of me since I first learned about the New Deal and the war that followed.

And so I say this to those who tell my fellow boomers that our nostalgia for days of yore distorts our thinking as to whether, say, Caroline Kennedy, should be appointed to the United States Senate: All of what is said about her qualifications could have been and was said about her uncle, whose tenure in the Senate since he arrived in 1962 has qualified him as one of the best United States Senators in the history of our nation and is not much different than what was said about her father, who inspired millions, and President-elect Obama, who may do so as well.

My best wishes for the holiday season.