On Christmas Eve

 

On Christmas Eve we walked out into the night. First, we girded ourselves with heavy jackets, knit scarves, gloves and hats knitted over the past years by our aunts and grandmothers. The whole neighborhood was lit up, and the lights skittered across the snow. Our neighbor's house had a tableaux of the manger, replete with a donkey, a cow, a camel, and two sheep all gazing towards replicas of Joseph and Mary, though they both looked a bit too Caucasian, who were in turn looking into a crib at a small little bundle of Jesus.

We wandered further down the street, our bodies made shadows in the streetlights, and my son pointed to them and smiled, he and I, walking hand in hand in repeat on the bank of snow. At the end of the street we saw a group of carolers singing Joy to the World to an older woman, glasses perched on her head, who was looking at them with a face I can only describe as filled with wonder. The voices reached out to us across the snow, thick and full, like the snow that had fallen over night.

It was Christmas Eve and the lights were resplendent. Across the street from the carolers was a house that had a large snow globe in front. Inside the globe Santa stood at the front of a sleigh, pulled by eight tiny reindeer, and, smaller still, was a workshop complete with elves, work tables, benches, small screw divers, a saw, and small screws. And inside the workshop was a tree and gathered underneath it were presents that were both indescribably small but also of all shapes and sizes. None of us understood who could have made such a thing. We stood in awe and wonder as the angels must have stood on the seventh day of Creation.

We were carrying cider in our thermos's. We took a drink and were warmed. The night was cold, icicles hung on the eaves and bird houses had the water frozen over in their tiny feeders. A sheet of quiet lay over the whole street.

As we walked back towards home we passed a house that was completely unlit. It was so quiet and small that you almost didn't notice it, and we too almost passed it without a second glance. A porch light was on, creating a miniscule shell of light, but everything else lay in darkness. My children poked and prodded at me, asking why the house was not lit like the others, and I wondered what I should tell them.

The world is as mysterious as the ice. Ten years ago I had Christmas dinner with another woman in a far away city, and slept with her on the couch while the television played White Christmas. My children and everything before me were phantasms, nothing more than dreams. After dinner, she and I talked to her sister, who eventually went to bed, and then she and I sat on the couch and talked for hours about family, God, and silence. We got nowhere because no one ever does in these conversations, but we felt closer. I went to bed that night on the soft green couch thinking of the days ahead.

And now here I was bent down in the street, considering what to say to my children in this city thousands of miles away from where I'd been. "Someone died," I told them, and they seemed to understand, turning away and trudging with their little boots picking up bits of snow and sending it on either side, mini-snow plows.

Back in our own house, we kicked off our shoes, and I stoked the fire. After a while, I kissed the children on their sweet little heads and ushered them into sleep. Downstairs, I read an article about the situation in Iraq, the bombed out cities and broken families, I read about the ill treatment of chickens and animals the world over. My wife was wrapping presents and listening to a Christmas mix that I'd strung together by spending hours on the internet pulling things together.

Before bed, I was given a plate of cookies to put at the base of the stairs. I was instructed by my wife to take a bite from one or two and to leave it next to a glass of milk to convince them of the validity of a very strange being. And yet, as I reached the door, something possessed me this particular Christmas Eve to pass by the foyer and to open the door. It was cold outside. The moon was a sliver of silver in the black mountain of sky. I walked down the street, my feet slipping down into the soft snow, wetting my socks, I walked up to the house that was nearly dark, hoping that someone was still awake.

I knocked on the door, and it took a few moments for someone to answer. "I brought these to you," I said, to the woman, Helen, who answered the door. She smiled at me strangely, taking the plate of proffered cookies and turning as one of the children came downstairs, rubbing her eyes, wearing a blue nightgown, covered in snow flakes. "Who is it?" she asked her mother.
"The neighbor," she said.
"Oh," the little girl said, "I heard the door, and I thought you were Santa Claus."
I hesitated and received an encouraging smile from Helen. "I'm not, but he'll be here soon. You'd best get back to bed, so he can come soon."
The girl, a little angel with golden hair and rosy cheeks, the very picture of a bloom of youth, smiled at me brightly and marched back up the stairs.

On the way back home, a light snow started to fall, a flurry of snowflakes dusting the ground, brushing my cheeks like the fingers and lips of a lover. I walked back inside the house and up the stairs to where everyone was sleeping. I sat down in the middle of the hallway where I could hear them all breathing, and I thanked the Lord, in all his infinite wisdom or folly, strangeness, or irony for the sound of their breathing, even and steady, like the snow falling on the slender branches of trees.