And To All a Good Night

A good friend of mine who is not a Christian recently remarked, “You know, there really is something about Christmas. People really do act differently. There’s a heightened sense of goodness that you can see and feel in people.” She said this admiringly, with a sense of wonder.

On this most enchanted night of the year, I wonder. Why is Christmas infused with magic? Why do we feel differently? Perhaps it is the confluence of Forgiveness—that Jesus was born to save us from our sins—and Innocence—we tend to focus on children, their hopes, their fantasies—and Unexpected (well sort of expected) Fortune—that a visit from Santa will bless our lives in the middle of the night without all the Ty Pennington dialogue. Yes, maybe the word is Blessed. (In Greek, the word for blessing translates roughly into "Lynne, Stephen, and Ariel".)

So break out the eggnog, put another log on the fire, and thank God for your blessings. I will haul some personal favorites tonight out of memory, bookcase and DVD stack: A Christmas Carol, with its tale of redemption, A Child’s Christmas in Wales—prose-poetry that goes down like hot chicken soup, and the film Love, Actually (minus a couple of rather, ahem, adult scenes they meant to be 'funny'), in which love dreams really do come true. I will be staring at and studying my beautiful family.

And tonight I will pledge like Mr. Scrooge to keep the spirit of Christmas all through the year, and not just for an ephemeral fortnight.

Peace.