My father died on Christmas Day, 1957. The holiday has never been the same.

This Christmas column is about reflections, not only on my father, who was drafted in World War I but never made it beyond basic training, but on those who stood guard that we might live in a free country.

Francis Emond, now 103, was stationed on the USS Pennsylvania on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 1941. In a Boston Globe interview, he put it understatedly: “A lot of different things were going on.” I have never met him, and the same is true of Si Spiegel, a 97-year old Jewish New Yorker recently written up in The New York Times. He was a heroic bomber pilot over Germany in World War II. After the war, he became wealthy selling artificial Christmas trees.

I did know Stephen Bower Young, who was also at Pearl Harbor on “the date which will live in infamy.” Like Emond, he was assigned to a battleship, the USS Oklahoma. The ship capsized after being hit by torpedoes, leaving Steve and at least a dozen others trapped in the lower compartment of turret No. 4.

Water rose around them; there was no way out, and all they could do was tap on the ceiling (formerly the floor) and pray. The next day, civilians from Ford’s Island heard  the tapping, cut through the exposed hull and rescued Steve and the others. In 1991, Steve wrote a book about his experience, “Trapped at Pearl Harbor: Escape from Battleship Oklahoma.”

In the mid-1990s, Steve and I went to Houston along with three others and visited the Oklahoma’s sister ship, the USS Texas, which is now a museum. We got permission to see the turret in the stern, where the lower handling room is identical to the Oklahoma’s. For me and the others, it was an extraordinary experience. We revisited history with Steve as our guide.

U.S. Sen. Bob Dole also served our country, in his case on the ground in Italy as the leader of a platoon of mountain troops. After his recent death, I read about his heroic war service and the horrific battlefield injuries he sustained. I think of him, as I do of his fellow Sen. John McCain, as an exemplar of bravery, sacrifice and patriotism. They, like Francis Emond, Si Spiegel and Steve Young were our country’s guardians..

The same is true of this year’s Medal of Honor recipients, Sgt. 1st Class AlwynCashe, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz and Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, only one of whom, Plumlee, survived his feats of battleground bravery and lived to receive the award. I rarely use the word “awesome,” but that is an appropriate word to describe what these men did, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As we look around our country today, we see men and women serving as guardians of our freedom, and we see others who would deny us the democracy for which so many fought in wartime. Like the men I have named, the former are heroes, the latter are not.

Heroism comes in different forms. George Bailey. the fictional character played by Jimmy Stewart in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” was ineligible to serve in World War II, but he was a hero. He stayed home where he led a life of sacrifice and saved a community. Every year, I watch the movie on Christmas Eve.

In a time of despair, luck shone on George Bailey in the form of a guardian angel. Of course, there is no such thing – the mind plays tricks on us – but in these troubled times we could all use one. My father, who let us have a Christmas tree when we were young – not from our co-religionist Spiegel but from the woods out back – wakes me up every Christmas morning at 6:15 a.m., the time the hospital called. He is my guardian angel.

Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.