Christmas Eve

How did Christmas manage to arrive so quickly this year?  Perhaps it is because Thanksgiving arrived on November 28, as late as it possibly can. Or perhaps it is just that we are a year older than last year, and time seems to move more and more rapidly with every passing year - the opposite of this aging roadrunner, who seems to move more and more slowly . . .

I see that I have not written in this blog for more than two weeks.  During that period of time, the weather turned warmer, then colder, and then warmer again.  Today, Christmas Eve, the temperature was a balmy 61 degrees in Highlands.  According to the meteorologists, this is not the warmest Christmas on record, but it surely must be close to it.  I ran six miles in shorts and a light shirt, four of them with my friend Fred, talking about everything and anything.  Except politics, that is.  Why spoil a good run in this holy season by talking about Washington?

This afternoon, I watched a performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors on my computer, one of my favorite pieces of music for this time of year.  And then we attended the candlelight service at the Presbyterian Church this evening, at which the old familiar hymns are sung and visiting children dressed in red and green make us smile.  We remember bringing our daughter here many times, beginning when she was six months old.  "Remember that time we realized one of her little shoes had fallen off, and you had to go back outside and find it?" Martha asked, and of course I did.  Christmas is made of memories like that, and the sweet smell of cookies in the oven, the baking turkey, the family gathered around the table, and the tree hung with ornaments collected over a lifetime.

I wrote a little carol on this theme many years ago:

A Carol.

All the lights are on tonight,
All the candles lit;
The star is in the window where
The little village sits.

These decorations, so familiar,
Year to year:
The words of love and kindness
We need to hear.

Christmas carols sung outside
In the frosty night,
Gathered round the welcome door,
Warm and golden bright.

It is indeed a holy time of year, and I always like to remember those wonderful words spoken by Marcellus at the end of the first Act of Hamlet on this night:

Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. 

After the candlelight service was over, we departed from tradition (something we find we enjoy doing more and more) and decided to have Chinese food, so we stopped at Asia House for take-out - jumbo shrimp and mixed vegetables - the first time I remember eating our Christmas Eve dinner with chopsticks.  Then we returned to tradition and played a game of Christmas Scrabble in front of the fireplace (extra points for Christmas words, like ox and ass and manger and star).  

And so we wish you all a Merry Christmas in this hallow'd and gracious time of year.