Christmas slid under the door this morning and whispered in our ears.
"I'm here. Wake up. It's Christmas day."
There are books and socks and pajamas wrapped in velvet bags under the tree with names attached. The stockings are lined up above the fireplace, brimming with chocolate and homemade
poppers. The table has candle arrangements the twins made at church, and there are cards hanging on ribbons covering every wall in the front hall. The stereo is playing
Randall Thompson's Alleluia and a basket full of freshly laid eggs is sitting on the counter destined for omelettes.
It's enough to lure me out from the flannel sheets.
The
smells and sights and sounds are delightful in themselves. But there is more than that at play. It is not merely one layer of senses. Christmas is cumulative.
The same bags have cloaked presents for the last fifteen years. The stockings go back a quarter of a century, and have the signs of wear to prove it. The cards are ones I have saved from as long ago as Albuquerque days and have southwestern Marys next to saguaro plants. Some cards are from people who are now
celebrating in heaven and others retell the history of friends as babies arrive and children marry. I even keep a few of marriages that have ended, to remind me of what once was alive. Remembering it feels more tender than pretending it never was.
Marriage is cumulative too. When I hand John his modest gift today I will pile it on top of thirty years of gifts. Or the lack of them. There are no toddlers now to break ornaments or spill hot cocoa on my lap. There are no
disgruntled teenagers who wanted more than they got. We no longer live three thousand miles away from grandparents and cousins.
Time has a kind habit of sifting out the harsh memories, or at least rounding the edges. The sour recollections add flavor, and frame the preciousness of what has been born of struggle.
Christmas itself
is surrounded by hardship. Herod is as cruel a potentate as ever wiped out a generation of babies, and the pilgrimage to Egypt was more arduous than any trek home for the holidays.
Yet the peace that was promised by a sky full of angels obliterates all that, and renders the threats of soldiers impotent. The true Power lay in a manger, a cumulative strength that has grown and continues to grow over centuries and planets, blasting our temporary pain with
enough light to brighten the dreary corners of our hearts and wake us up to the dawn of who we are becoming.
