Here, at the end of 2021, Covid casts a shadow, but there is a greater light in the darkness. At last, Christmas is here. 

Christmas has always been a special time for me, and I hope it is that for most people. 

I have innumerable positive childhood memories of my family celebrating this holiday, and many pictures too. My father always took a picture of us children standing on the long staircase, one per step, along the banister where our Christmas stockings hung, stockings and children in fine Germanic order…the oldest on the highest step and me, the youngest on the bottom, and those in between in between.  

If one were blind and couldn’t see the decorations and the tree, you’d know it was Christmas because my father would play Handel’s Messiah constantly on his prized Magnavox console stereo. And if you were blind and deaf, you’d still know it was Christmas from the smell of the genuine and large Christmas tree. Finding the right one was somewhat of an ordeal, as my perfectionist father had to browse through all the trees on at least two lots in the freezing cold to find just the right one.  

Decorating the tree was a happy ritual. We had a large collection of ornaments. Some were inherited from my parents’ grandparents, which were now valuable antiques and had come from Germany in the 1800’s. Some were gifts, but every one had a story attached. You couldn’t just put an ornament on the tree; you had to tell or be reminded of the story, who gave it to us or where and when it was acquired. Then some special ornaments were reserved for Mom and Dad to put on the tree. So in the process of putting up the tree, the family history was told, dead or absent relatives and friends made present through the ornaments connected to them. All the while Christmas music was being played on the stereo. My father was always in a good mood then. He didn’t even get angry the time the cat, whom he did not like, knocked over the tree. 

Only after the tree was up were my closest brother and I allowed to assemble the crèche in the fireplace. It was made of cardboard – depression era, I guess – and seemed old at the earliest time I can remember. It went up in a hurry; we all knew the story by heart, and that story would be told and heard in another sacred place. 

We used the same 10-cent box of foil tinsel strips for over a decade (another depression era habit), with every single strip carefully taken off the tree and wrapped around the same card they came on when the tree came down, which was only after January 6, after the visit of the Three Kings. 

A house tradition at Portsmouth: setting up the Nativity Scene in the church

That’s when the town came around with a special pickup of discarded trees, and then a week later all the trees were trucked to Lake Ontario Beach Park where they fueled a spectacular bonfire after dark, a fitting end to the birthday celebrations of the Light of the World.  

But I digress. The point I am trying to make is that Christmas is a very sensual holiday, making an impression on all our bodily, mental and spiritual senses. And I think it is that way for a good theological reason, an awesome reason. We celebrate that God became a man, a very real human man, having all of our emotions and senses. So it is a characteristic of the Catholic Church that we use all of our senses to lead us to God, smells and bells as they say. All of our sacraments involve sensual signs.  

And much of our liturgy, especially at Christmas, tells stories. Telling and re-telling the stories is important, even if we all know them, even if it seems people aren’t listening. Singing the Christmas Carols is important, sending cards to dear friends, saying “Merry Christmas” (even if we’re not sure “merry” is really the right word for the occasion)…it’s all important in turning loose in the world and in our lives the grace and power of Christmas. 

The Nativity Scene, in the lobby of the Science Building

One year at Christmastime I visited one of our parishioners who was having surgery the next day. He was an English major and he recited to me a poem by Francis Thompson, author of the well-known “Hound of Heaven.” The poem is officially titled “Ex Ore Infantium,” but better known as “Little Jesus.” It eloquently expresses the innocent, childlike wonder in the Incarnation…albeit in Victorian English. It starts: 

Little Jesus, wast Thou shy 
Once, and just so small as I? 
And what did it feel like to be 
Out of Heaven, and just like me? 

Still, it is worth reading to recapture – to remember – some of that wonder and innocence, when stories had real power in our lives. You can find the poem online. 

It was the power of the Christmas story and my family’s holiday traditions that ultimately reopened the door of my faith. It was while driving home to be with my family during Christmastime (a slow time in hotels, my line of work then) through the Susquehanna Valley and the mountains of north central Pennsylvania, listening to The Messiah and other Christmas music on the car tape player, 33 years ago, that this God-Man we now celebrate broke into my consciousness and trapped me in my car, demanding to know who I thought He really was. I had to tell Him the truth, and that brought me back to the Church and truly home for Christmas. 

Christmas is about the Truth, the beautiful Truth, that all our senses can behold. May this Truth set you free, and so may you have a happy and blessed Christmas in your home. I wish you and everyone in your family and circle of friends a truly Merry Christmas, a happy and holy Christmas, full of joy and love and warmth and gratitude – inside and outside; and may it all extend for you well into the New Year.