Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It's coming on Christmas, and up on the ridge the family farms sell cut-your-owns to send their kids to college. Ours consumes the living room, though we took it off four feet up to clear the ceiling; five hundred tiny lights and a wife's lifetime of ornaments spread sparse against the tapered balsam.

Tonight was meant to be a full-fledged traditional Christmas with the intimates, all four parents, their only grandkids, our longsettled selves. Darcie made a duck and all the trimmings: beets, stuffed game hens, a cheese and a balsam reduction, three sorts of sauce, and for an hour or three the house was just full enough, almost comfortable.

The intention was to follow this with a true turn-of-the-century Christmas, complete with roasted chestnuts and a host of recreated otherthings for the reenactment fan at Sturbridge Village. But tiny Cassia's cold made her too cranky to drag into the stilldry winter, so Dad and I stayed home to drink endless tiny cups of imaginary tea in front of the unattended television. By the time her bedtime had come and gone, so had Dad; all that was left was to bathe the fogheaded child, and wait for mama.

Tomorrow the elderchild will play Mary in our Church pageant. Smalltown Unitarian being what it is, there's been no rehearsal; Joseph will be played by the minster's child; between them they make up half the kids in the congregation. She was encouraged to dress up as anything she likes, "from fairy to lobster"; Darcie being what she is, there's sure to be a costume hanging in a closet somewhere already.

For most of my life Christmas was a cultural thing, everywhere but here; of the public sphere, and faintly imagined in other people's houses. Our Jewish lot brought presents, and the lights were bright, too.

Somewhere in those years I fell in love with someone who loves Christmas, and ceremony, and peace on earth. Christmas came into my house, and nestled in me.

I was thinking about Christmas songs the other day, and I finally realized something: what I love so much about Christmas has always been the way the music is something we all share in common; how with universal song we can belt our joy out together, and do; how it brings the world a little closer every year, if only for these darker days.

There's little else so powerful, and so sustained, in this world.

Jewish or Christian, Muslim or Pagan, let us celebrate together anything at all, so long as it can bring smiles of familiarity and memories of gingerbread to even strangers. Merry Christmas, everyone. God bless us, every one.