Thinking back, I’ve never had a bad Christmas. Some have been touched by the sadness of loved ones no longer with us, but they were not bad. All my life I had wonderful parents and grandparents who went out of the way to make sure my siblings and I were never disappointed on Christmas morning. They developed and held traditions and foods throughout the years so that even when I was in college, and later married, Christmas always meant coming home.
Certainly as I aged, my Christmases changed and evolved over the years, especially with the arrival of my own children. I remember returning home from the celebration at my parents house and sitting up late at night one Christmas eve, by the light of the tree rocking my first child, only 4 months old on her first Christmas. I remember looking down at the child sleeping so peacefully in my arms and thinking how I’ve never loved anyone in quite this way before. The love of a child by its mother was stunning. No one but another parent could understand this feeling. Then tears began to trickle down my cheek as I realized that this must be how much my parents loved me all these 28 years. You can never know that until you hold your firstborn in your arms. Within minutes I felt the awe of the tremendous responsibility set before my husband and I. It is our turn to see to it that this child has traditions she can count on in the years to come.
Today, as I look around our living room, dinner cooking and adult children playing on their i-things with Christmas music playing in the background, it’s evident my husband and I have done our job. As far as the meaning of Christmas goes, I think my children have gotten that too. Today I read a piece in the Cape Cod Times about a father sitting on the floor with his 6 year old son as they unpacked the manger. The child asked his father what this was all about. The father decided the only way to really explain it was to read it to him out of a children’s Bible. He read just the nativity scene to him. When he finished, his son said, “So, it’s God’s birthday?” He explained a bit more how God, the Creator of Everything, emptied Itself and became an infant child, growing up here on Earth, within a particular space and time. At the end of the explanation the boy looked up at his dad and said, “God was showing us how to be a person.”
I can’t think of a simpler way to state the meaning of Christmas. Looking at my daughters today and listening to their stories about their adult lives over the last two days, its evident they got the idea.
And so, as another Christmas Day goes by, once again I see Christmas through a child’s eyes, and ….I have written.
Leave a Reply