So, This is Christmas at Fifty-Eight
I love the Christmas season. It’s a sensual spectacle for my soul. The yummy treats that appear only once a year, even if my appetite for them is a year-round event. The power of light to pierce the short December days and even longer December nights.
The glorious music. The profane and holy, both speaking of love in their own way. The yearning we have for those that are dear to us, to be near to us once more. Like Dorothy, remembering there is no place like home; home for the holidays. No wanting a lot for Christmas, only you.
I can’t recall fifty-eight years’ worth of Christmas presents, but I can warmly remember the excitement I felt as my Grandfather’s 1972 Lincoln Continental pulled in front of our house days before Christmas. An automobile as enormous as Santa’s sleigh. Delivering a jolly old man, along with my Uncle. A man who was a mash-up between Professor Hinkle and Mister Scrooge.
The palpable gratitude my heart felt when giving gifts to people who really needed them but who could not afford them. Offerings as valuable as gold, frankincense and myrrh. The bygone smiles of nieces and nephews who were once children, as they discovered their own Christmas joy. Some of them now discovering the joy of playing Santa.
I can’t recall fifty-eight years’ worth of Christmas gifts, but I can warmly remember dancing and performing alone in our living room. Perry Como singing “Take a bus, take a train, go and hop an aeroplane”. Even if I knew deep inside there never would be any wife or kiddies to put in the family car.
Andy Williams reminding me it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Prancing like Dancer to his classic Christmas album. Linus telling Charlie Brown what Christmas is about before we lost ourselves in a giant retail maze.
I can’t recall fifty-eight years’ worth of Christmas gifts, but I can lovingly remember standing next to my family during one of my adolescence Christmas Eve candlelight services. A family still grieving for our father now in heaven. A family at peace knowing heaven and earth will be reunited once more.
Experiencing an empathic aching of separation, like God has for all his children. A world desperately seeking Love, while we wage war against one another physically and spiritually. The Prince of Peace as elusive within our own hearts as He was two millennia ago.
The Christmas season awakening an animated liveliness deep inside our hearts. A hidden consciousness that connects us to the past while looking forward to a hope filled future. No matter how bleak our current circumstances might be.
Our Christmas tree and any gifts absent this year. No longer finding any happiness in the stuff that’s under the tree. My previous Grinchy heart filled with peace. Spiritually awake and filled with Love not belongings.
What is priceless are the fifty-eight years of memories I carry in my heart. Having forgotten almost every Christmas gift I was given. The ones I value are inexpensive but opulent with sentimentality.
A little figurine my parents gave me of a resting feline that looks like our first cat Mozzer. Sitting on the mantel next to our little boy’s feline ashes. A resin sculpture keeping watch over his urn, until we snuggle again.
A thread born and tired teddy bear given to me by my grandparents when we celebrated our first Christmas together. He sits slouched in my office, like an exhausted furry elf on the shelf with alopecia. Both of us having seen better hair and fur days.
The first ornament Jose and I bought in anticipation of our first Christmas together. A foreign made, mass produced item. Both of us still very unfamiliar with one another. Believing in the birth of our new love and all its future possibilities.
Fifteen years later still searching for that elusive manager even if we’ve already left for the desert. No dreams to warn us of the plagues that would follow. Finding comfort in knowing that Love will triumph, and this too shall pass.
As angry as I was at the world as an adult, I would always find hidden glimmers of love in my heart at Christmas. Decking the halls with boughs of holly. Ensuring that Christmas at our home was beautiful, especially if children were part of our celebration.
A little bear military band dressed in matchings uniforms with festive hats. Playing Christmas melodies on their xylophone. Striking each bar with mallets as their bear heads bobbled up and down to the electronic melody of a permissions free song.
Strings of lights, ropes of evergreen swag and chains of garland. Decorations here, there and everywhere. Someone making the comment when they visited, it looks like “Christmas threw-up”. Happy Holidays.
Christmas became just another witness to my false belief that stuff will bring me happiness, so why not more stuff? A belief as far from Bethlehem as we are now. Not yet discovering Love is never about objects but always about subjects.
This Advent lesson of grace and sacrifice would happen much later in my life, but it would happen. God filling my heart with a resounding joy. Both heaven and earth singing once I stopped searching for Christmas stuff and instead looked for the Christmas star. Trying to create more love in the world all year-round. My heart is filled with Love.
The love of God surrounding everyone who gathers around all Christmas trees. The love of God surrounding all of us, even if we have no Christmas tree. Christmas doesn’t come from a store because Christmas means a whole lot more.
Once I humbled myself and opened my heart to Love, everyday became Christmas. With every new day remains the possibility for peace on earth and goodwill among all people. Let it start with me, with you. Christmas can come every day if we choose.