In my growing up years, we children often fell asleep to the
sounds of parental battles downstairs, someone screeching tires out of the
driveway in a fit of rage, glasses crashing against walls and voices shouting
to be heard.
But at Christmas time, the most amazing thing would happen.
For some reason, my parents called a truce, allowing a peaceful hush to descend
on our home. I’m not sure why the holy hush when we weren’t terribly religious,
but nevertheless some sort of reverence inspired by the season calmed spirits.
We had happy family moments, sitting around the fireplace in pajamas by the dim
light of our Christmas tree decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries,
laughing and conversing, eating pinwheel cookies, drinking eggnog. We would
discuss the little fat man who miraculously managed to bring toys to every
child in the world in one night, unaware that his behavior rang of omnipresence,
showing that even folks unable to grasp the real meaning of Christmas bumped up
against its truth.
way we loved each other during Christmas. I think my parents would’ve chosen to live
everyday in that calm but didn’t know how to bottle the peace and use it
another day. Unfortunately the truce broke soon after the holiday, and our
family eventually shattered.
but unlike my family of origin, we understood the meaning of the celebration
that caused people all over the world, the broken and battered world, to hope
and believe in reconciliation with God. We celebrated with many of the same
traditions as my parents, but with a sense of significance.
and burns bright with lights for a God so many don’t even believe in, many
chuckling at the ridiculousness of the faith story, even considering it
offensive. To some, it’s a fairytale that weak folks believe, this idea that a powerful
creator entered into his creation in the form of a helpless baby, born to an
unwed teenage mother in a building shared with farm animals. He could’ve lived
in a palace and commanded armies to protect him and demand obedience. Instead
he lived simply and humbly, cared for the marginalized, and submitted to a
horrendous death.
basing his life on this seemingly far-fetched storyline in his book Thomas Wingfold: “Even
if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not…Let
me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same
precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in
their lives, and with their deaths make even the nothingness into which they
have passed like the garden of the Lord.”
we need it.
I'm a little late catching up, but this is beautiful, Linda! A holy hush. You have a way with words, and I love the redemptive work God has done in your family.