~ A Christmas Reflection ~

The twilight golds fade into the evening dark,
And stars illuminate with endless light.
Below this canopy, a journey has embarked~
A peasant King is born this epic night.
And though the restless world dwells in deathly state,
I look upon this child who rests without a fear of harm
And marvel knowing that our God is good and great
And that that God is now the One I cuddle in my arms.

Late on Christmas Eve, all was put to bed. The sun snuggled below the quilted stars, and the moon shone gently as a Christmas candle. The noises in the neighborhood were silenced but lighted so that all was calm and all was bright.

Within our home, the tree was lit with soft lights, like dozens of moons watching over us in the night. While my wife silently breathed contentedly in her repose, my daughters were sleeping and dreaming in their Christmas pjs. I tucked them all again, a dutiful dad, and kissed their foreheads, and prayed their rest would bring them peace; a peace that’s peaceful like this season. They were beautiful and sweet and angelic. Children filled with the hope that angels bring with many good tidings. Perhaps it was the presents that reflected something – light, joy, completed wish list.

I think that night my mind took pictures of my children’s sleeping faces. As I myself climbed into bed, I didn’t feel giddy like kids do. I think I aged 40 years that night. My heart was more of a dad’s heart than ever before – as a dad during Christmas, I mean. Joy was there of course, but not the giddiness for presents or cookies or Santa or other worldly images of Christmas. Rather, I couldn’t stop thinking of a child.

Into the night this thought lingered long, and I’m delighted I remembered those thoughts. I recalled our family singing Christmas carols before the tree that night. Happy smiles and glistening eyes burned in my mind. I thought long of other happy occasions, such as birthdays and baptisms, first steps and first teeth. In my dreams that night, I held one of my baby daughters as on the day they were born. We were not in a hospital though. There was no artificial light or sounds of a pacifier or texture of a cotton blanket or smell of antiseptics or taste of medicines. I think we were in a shed, maybe a lean-to, possibly a cave with a wooden shelter resting outside its opening.

I saw my baby, but it was not my daughter. It was a baby boy wrapped like a mummy from head to foot. Shock and surprise filled my soul. My hands trembled because this was not my child at all. I didn’t recognize this baby boy. He was not a nephew or a friend’s son. I would not and could not put him down of course.

Something stirred to my left, and I saw first a young man wrapping a young woman in a long woolen cloth. She seemed cold that deep night. Later he placed an animal skin on her to help her keep warm. She rested her head on a leather bag that was emptied of contents and stuffed with hay. Jars of water were nearby and some linen cloth beside the fire. They were very bloody, I remember, and were slowly being fed to the fire which made sense to me. The young man, the husband I understood, left a moment and returned with a clay bowl filled with grain. He placed the kernels in a bronze pot with water and let it boil into porridge.

I heard him speaking to his wife. She was in some discomfort and tried to sit up but cried out in pain. Yet, her cries turned to happy breathing and smiling. They heard a whimper and looked at me. I too heard the whimper and remembered I was holding someone. A baby. Someone small and fragile and precious. The baby boy yawned and cried softly. I held him out to his mother and father, but they just watched and did not reach out to him. The baby sighed and fell back to sleep and breathed softly once again. The mother and father laughed again softly and happily. They spoke gently in words I did not understand, but I understood that I must hold tightly to the child wrapped tightly in the linen cloths.

His little body was warm in my arms. The rigid linen felt not too comfortable to my fingers, yet he slept on in perfect peace. I touched his delicate black hair, soft as goose down. His cheeks were red and softer than velvet. I felt for his tiny fingers and counted all ten. Each hand clenched into a fist. The left hand wrapped around a piece of the linen. He was precious. Infant wrinkles crossed the brow and round the chin that a parent would love to stroke and kiss. I lifted his head to my lips and kissed his forehead. Precious and fragile to the touch, but such joy in my heart and peace in my mind.

A small woolly dog walked by my feet but did not stop. It walked on by a lamb eating hay in the corner of the shed. Two donkeys were penned in another stall and nibbled some grasses. There was a smell of earthiness and musk and midnight. The baby, though, had the fragrance of all newborn babies, the peculiar sweetness of warm water from cleansing and mother’s milk from nourishment. His perfumed breath entered my nostrils, and drew me closer to the life in him.

I sniffed the air again and caught the scent of the porridge. It was cooked, and the husband was serving his wife. She held a wooden spoon and blew on the steaming liquid, then slurped the porridge between her lips. He also ate some porridge for his own strength and fed more fuel into the fire to keep the supper warm. As they ate, they looked at the baby boy and smiled lovingly. With each bite of food, they appeared more rested and more comfortable. The boiled grain nourished them. I remember thinking how the grain was fed to the mother and father, and the grass and stems and straw were given as fodder to the animals. Nothing was wasted to sustain so that they could sustain this little child in my arms. The mother beckoned to me, and I held the child to her. She rose slowly and set him in a feeding trough beside her, very close and softened with clean straw. I wished I could hold him longer, but the mother wanted him. Comfort he gave to us all.

Footsteps were heard outside the shelter, and I saw a group of men who walked quickly under the bright, night sky and spoke excitedly to each other. With clothing of wool and staffs, shepherds they were. They carried the scent of the grass and dew in their beards and coverings. Each man came forward to the manger and knelt in honor of the baby. Their mouths were open and trembling. Several bowed with their faces to the ground and spoke in words I knew to be blessings. One very elderly shepherd let tears from his eyes drip to the ground. He reached for the baby, and gentle as an angel and cooing as a dove, he held and kissed and wept over the baby. His face trembled with joy, and words came from his mouth to his mother and father. They spoke over the baby for many minutes, and the men gripped arms and embraced and shed more tears of joys. The mother looked longingly at the kindness of the shepherds who passed the baby from hands that had held baby lambs to hands that had butchered sheep for life.

For many more long minutes, these shepherds stayed and talked with the mother and father. A few others from the village also came to peer in, but they did not stay like the shepherds. Perhaps it was too crowded so they lingered momentarily and left. Sadly, they did not see the child that brought about the commotion. But, the throng stayed and gave a few woolen blankets and sheep skins to the mother and father. It was not readily accepted, but the shepherds insisted in their tones and laughter. All was full of love and joy.

The baby began to cry a moment, and mother beckoned for her child. She held him to her face and the shepherds bowed once more and slowly walked away full of chatter and laughter and tears. The baby boy slept once again, and I silently walked to the mother to hold him again. She smiled at me and the father smiled at me. One final holding, one final moment to breathe the newborn’s perfumed breath and touch the short black hair, soft as goose down. With a kiss on his forehead, I returned him to his mother who cared for him only as a mother can do. I stepped outside, remembering the feel of the shrouded warm baby in my arms, the sight of the shepherds praising the child, the sound of the mother and father smiling and laughing to themselves, and the taste of the earth inside that shelter. Outside, I looked to the heavens and saw the shining of many heavenly bodies and the brightest nightly lights I had ever seen. The beams fell on the shelter and the child within. The path to the inside was easily visible and traversable so that anyone seeking could find.

I woke that Christmas morning realizing who that baby boy was. I didn’t say his name in my dreams, but I knew who he was. And, I must say, that I held him. The promised child. The one we all are longing for. Too many Christmases have come and gone for me that I failed in one thing. I failed to hold the child. I began the holiday just looking in rather than beginning inside the stable with the child in my arms. I failed to walk into the stable with joy like the shepherds. Why would I ever linger any longer outside the doorway? Beginning Christmas in the stable, by the manger, holding the child each December 25^th lures me away from the sidewalk and into where I need to be.

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2021, December