Every year around this time I decide to write a Christmas story. By January I forget all about it. But this year I am determined.
It will start with a squirrel and end with a rooster.
It will start with a night and end with a dawn.
Saint Nicholas will make an appearance, as he must.
All of the animals will talk.
Snow and lights.
There may even be a love story.
And it will be a classic. Because no one writes a Christmas story without hoping that it will become a classic. It will be read to unruly grandchildren on winter nights when they wriggle in their beds for the knowledge that a stack of presents is waiting for them downstairs, if only they could go to sleep. It will smell of cinnamon and peppermint and spruce. It will be whispered in the half-darkness of shuttered windows and nightlights shaped like fairies or whales or moons. It will be murmured like a wintertime song, puzzled out and reasoned with. It will mean more than it looks like on the surface.
As the wise child said, "It will be true on the inside."
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
12.05.2013
12.01.2013
advent.
Here it comes. Can you hear it?
And lo, it came to pass that there was a Black Friday sale! But Christmas was not in the sale.
And lo, after the sale there was a dazzle of commercials and ads! But Christmas was not in the commercials or the ads.
And lo, after the ads there was a flurry of carols and radio airplay and jingle bells and pageants! But Christmas was not in the carols, airplay, jingle bells, or pageants.
And after the carols, airplay, jingle bells, pageants...one flickering candle and a still small voice crying from the midst of a desert nowhere:
Prepare ye a way for the LORD; clear a straight path for Him.
And Christmas came, but they did not recognize it, and neither do I.
Not then, and certainly not now.
Do you hear it? It is sneaking up on you. It is sneaking up on me. It is craftier than us, because it is far older than we are. Listen well, and you may yet hear its footsteps behind, before, around us. It is the intake of breath before the exhalation that worries the candles, trembles the air, fills the spaces. It will appear in the edge of our vision, in the corner we are not watching. It will descend when we have given it up, it will appear when it is least observed.
Here it comes. Can you hear it?
And lo, it came to pass that there was a Black Friday sale! But Christmas was not in the sale.
And lo, after the sale there was a dazzle of commercials and ads! But Christmas was not in the commercials or the ads.
And lo, after the ads there was a flurry of carols and radio airplay and jingle bells and pageants! But Christmas was not in the carols, airplay, jingle bells, or pageants.
And after the carols, airplay, jingle bells, pageants...one flickering candle and a still small voice crying from the midst of a desert nowhere:
Prepare ye a way for the LORD; clear a straight path for Him.
And Christmas came, but they did not recognize it, and neither do I.
Not then, and certainly not now.
Do you hear it? It is sneaking up on you. It is sneaking up on me. It is craftier than us, because it is far older than we are. Listen well, and you may yet hear its footsteps behind, before, around us. It is the intake of breath before the exhalation that worries the candles, trembles the air, fills the spaces. It will appear in the edge of our vision, in the corner we are not watching. It will descend when we have given it up, it will appear when it is least observed.
Here it comes. Can you hear it?
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