“C’mon over here and lookie,” I said, scooping up my three-year-old granddaughter, Noah Kate, in my arms and walking to the bookcases in our living room. “Wanna see Santa Claus?”
Clinging to me, she studies the black-and-white photo, older than the years she can imagine.
“That’s me, your PopPop,” I explain, placing my index finger on the image of myself in the photo, “when I wasn’t much older than you, and there, that’s my brother, Dougie. We’re sitting in Santa’s lap.”
My mind retreated to Christmastime, the year of that photograph.
It was a month past my fifth birthday, and Dougie would be seven that coming February. Mom had dressed us in our little boy sport coats for Santa. Dougie and I stare straight ahead, gazing down, maybe at the display of faux presents at dear ol’ St. Nick’s feet.
And that was Dougie’s last Christmas.
No longer would there be the four of us boys together, no more photos of Dougie and me with Santa, because Dougie, 18 months older than me, would die in a car wreck a few months after that picture with Santa.
The following year, we skipped Christmas.
That was the Christmas when Dad packed us all into our station wagon, and several days later, behold, we were in Mexico City.
I’m sure we opened presents in the hotel room in Mexico City, but it’s all a blur to me.
Changing the scenery doesn’t fill the emptiness inside. Mom and Dad found a way through, but they grieved my brother’s death, each in different ways, until the day they passed and were reunited with him.
Not every Christmas is a “holly, jolly Christmas…the best time of the year.” At least not for everyone. Christmas brings joy for many, but for some, Christmas sits on the couch like an uninvited guest who prickles you the closer it edges your way because it’s uncomfortably clothed in pain, remorse, regret, and heartache.
No use trying to avoid it by looking away, for your eyes always seem to fall on a winter’s landscape, a barrenness that mirrors your grieving soul. Changing your position on the furniture won’t evade the grief ensconced over there on the couch, for sadness finds a way to your soul, wherever your body lands.
The only way through it is to go back, back before the sorrow, back to the first Christmas, where Christ the Son was born for us, Christ, the anointed One, who tabernacles with us now, wherever we are: beside a warm fireplace where cookies and milk await Santa to slip down the chimney, with a “Ho, ho, ho,” as he bounces “right down Santa Claus Lane,” or in a barren hotel room in Mexico City, where a Christmas without that loved one seems foreign, even strange.
But Christ is there, having come for us where we are: in our joy and sadness, hopes and disappointments, fulfillments and griefs.
Waiting for grief to fly away, we anticipate the celebration of Christ’s coming, and perhaps the only thing we can do is the best thing we can do: like holding a child in your arms, showing her a picture of a past that reminds us of a glorious Forever Christmas, when we will fall on our knees, and with joy sing: “O hear the angel voices! O night divine, O night when Christ was born.”
And quite suddenly there’s Light: the Day has dawned; it’s Christmas morning.