An Ode to Christmas Eve

Peace on earth and mercy mild remain possible. On Christmas Eve, all things are possible.

More years ago than I care to admit, I spent a snowy winter living in a cabin at about 7,000 feet in the Bridger Range near Clyde Park, Montana.

I needed to finish a novel. The constant police sirens and whompa-whompa-whompa of low-flying helicopters in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington D.C. where I lived was making it impossible to hear myself think. Those sounds, plus political noise, still seem to make it impossible for Congress to think.

A friend’s father lent me the Montana cabin, which was a perfect combination of rustic and comforts – running water, electricity, sauna. I cut down dead trees and split wood for heat.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

The closest grocery store was in Bozeman. I parked my car at the home of two ranchers who lived along a gravel county road, went down the hill once a week to drive into Bozeman for supplies, which I loaded in an old backpack for the hike uphill to the cabin.

When snow was deep the uphill leg was a challenge, but the serenity of the cabin – an entire hillside to myself! – well worth the effort.

I was present for the Christmas Blizzard of 1983 – hmmm, just let slip the year. Temperature dropped to minus-47 Fahrenheit in Clyde Park, minus-52 nearby in Butte. A local warned me not to go outside when it’s that cold, and I took this sound advice.

Overnight during the blizzard I was awakened by a strange sound. Deer were rubbing up against the cabin because the outer walls were warmer than the air.

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The ranchers invited me to Christmas dinner, snow and natural beauty everywhere. As the day approached, I reflected that Christmas Eve is my favorite aspect of the holiday.

Bells that ring at midnight Christmas Eve – heralding birth of a Redeemer who forgives unconditionally – give hope for our future regardless of whether or not God exists.

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So I wrote the below for the oped page of the New York Times.

The essay about Christmas Eve was composed on an IBM Selectric I’d taken to the cabin strapped to my back.

After completing the manuscript, I hiked down to get my car and drive to the local post office – at a country store selling dry goods and animal feed – dropping the pages in the mail, no electronic transmission involved. It led the Times on Christmas Eve 1983, datelined CLYDE PARK, MONTANA.

Below is the piece as run, changing only an anachronistic reference to personal computers, which had just hit the market and were driving everyone crazy – a lot of colorful metaphors trying make them to work. (“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in the home” – Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.)

You can read – or hear the essay performed by the wonderful Actors Co-op Theatre of Los Angeles.

The Gift Behind the Gift

The most splendid Christmas gift, the most marveled and magic, is the gift that has not yet been opened. Opaque behind wrapping or winking foil, it is a box full of possibilities.

An unopened present might be anything -- gems, crystal, oranges, a promise of devotion. While the present is unopen, it can rest under the tree to be regarded and speculated upon at length, becoming whatever the recipient wishes.

Opening the present, by comparison, often is anticlimactic, no matter what the contents. Once opened, the gift passes from the enchanted realm of promise into the constrained reality of material possessions.

Then, begins to impose terms on its owner: terms like sizes, warranties, colors, maintenance, accessories, storage space, assembly, extremely thick books with instructions.

Anyone receiving the 10,001-piece LEGO Eiffel Tower set should not expect to speak to loved ones for weeks.

Open a gift and, like the vacuum in a coffee can, the possibilities whoosh away, never to be recovered.

So it is that Christmas Eve is the best part of Christmas. Compared with the clamor and urgency of the day itself -- the schedules to satisfy, the near-strangers to pretend to be close to, the post-gift frenzy to compare windfalls -- Christmas Eve is serene.

Christmas Eve is the moment, still and expectant, when the warmth of the season may be felt for its own sake.

The moment to light candles and listen for a sound in the distance. The moment when the meaning of the day, for those who wonder at it, may be contemplated without distraction from timetables or remote-controlled toy robots.

If anticipation is the essence of Christmas, Christmas Eve is the essence of anticipation. All the holiday's elves and henchmen revel in it.

Snow is most beautiful while it falls, noiseless and free. Once on the ground, succumbs to soot and stumbling tracks.

The solitary country house is most beautiful observed from the cold hill above, as out shine yellow squares of light and fire sparks, promising friendship.

The smell of Christmas cookies baking can be as satisfying as eating them, the first cup of Christmas cheer as gratifying as the next several combined.

Often what precedes is better than what follows, even when, like Christmas Day, what follows is grand.

The first kiss, clumsy and awkward -- first kisses have all the grace of two freight trains colliding on a dark siding -- can be most moving. However physically inadequate, the first conveys the promise of further kisses, more esthetic or athletic, and the promise of proximity after, the companionship that a kiss seals.

Photo by Jason Pischke on Unsplash

By that way of thinking, the most excitement available under the mistletoe is not the touch but the instant just before, when she (or he, depending) steps forward to join you there. That is the moment when you know someone else wants to be near you, a moment blushing with what might be.

The original point of Christmas, now better reflected on tranquil Christmas Eve than on the madcap day itself, was to proclaim what might be.

Wise scholars and shabby shepherds alike went to Bethlehem because they hoped what was happening there would begin to elevate humankind -- to make us truly humane, and deserving of each other.

So far, it has not worked out that way.

But that does not mean the ideal was wrong or the goal unattainable. What might be is elusive: not impossible.

Peace on earth and mercy mild still are possible. On Christmas Eve, all things are possible.

Christmas Eve Bonus: One highlight of the Apollo program came on Christmas Eve, 1968.

Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to the Moon, was in progress. Three astronauts went into orbit around the Moon, surveying touchdown spots for the historic Apollo 11 landing the next summer.

They’d brought along a Bible.

Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell took turns reading to the world the Genesis creation story that is sacred to Judaism and Christianity, embraced though not considered sacred by Islam and Baha'i. (The latter two think the six days of creation should be understood metaphorically; many Jews and Christians agree.)

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth,” Anders said from above the Moon. His words crackled as if from the effort of crossing the void.

There’s no way today’s federal government would allow astronauts to mention God or bring a Bible. They’d be required to recite an inventory of identity group grievances, then apologize for their own existence.

Whether or not the Genesis creation story is true, hearing it from another world – as astronauts looked back on our blue home – gave hope.

Any time you despair of the human experiment, listen to the creation story read from the Moon.

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