And so this is Christmas.  Balmy temps and curling ribbon everywhere.  Stray strips of Scotch tape stuck to my pants, grocery bags on counters ready to be unloaded for family traditions, nothing fancy but reminding me of my mother, my grandmothers, and Christmases when I lived in a state of high anticipation, sick, almost, and beside myself. 

Any other Christmas I would be pouting because it is so warm, but I have been assured that, as warm as it will be this week, there will be a dip into the low twenties, maybe even the teens at night, and all that volatility satisfies my need for atmospheric drama, so I sit around thinking about where my “warm room” might be if we lose power in an ice storm. 

Not that an ice storm is predicted. 

Yet. 

We know from Luke that on the night of Jesus’ birth the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks at night.  Fall and springtime are the seasons for that, so perhaps on the first Christmas the weather was a bit balmy, too. A nice temperate 50s or 60s, 70s, even, and also a good time to travel for paying those taxes. 

But not when you are expecting a child, of course. And not on the back of a donkey. 

We assume a donkey, and I think we must stick with it, because surely Joseph didn’t let Mary walk.  In a college class years ago the professor lectured on the steep and rocky terrain of the region, with dramatic drops from the Galilee hills to the Mediterranean coast. A trip of any distance can be difficult, but this one, surely more arduous than most. 

I let this weather remind me of a distant land, a distant time, rocky climbs and descents, the vagaries of living with obligations, inconvenient timing, life in general.  Different, and not so different from us. So much to get up in the morning to do and very little of it our own idea. 

There is almost nothing in my Christmas preparations that pays tribute to the original Christmas story.  Not the cookie baking, the candy making, the frantic house cleaning, the wrapping.  While I place my nativity set with great care, it occurs to me I used to collect them, and where are they now?  The handmade clay figures crafted in South America, the delicately carved ones I found out west.  Others I can no longer remember.

But this little one my mother had, so tiny all the figures fit in a round box the size of a tin of fancy salt. This one I keep near.  It lives in its little box in a drawer in the living room throughout the year.  I see it sometimes when I am looking for an old recipe of my grandmother’s.  Her recipe boxes live in that drawer, too. 

Being of the House of David, Joseph had to return home to pay taxes.  He had no choice but to walk, and Mary had to go, too.  In many ways we live a great distance from the first Christmas story. Sometimes we enjoy the lively debate over time line and the possibility of kings from the east, stars in the heavens. We, with our giant brains, we think and ponder and select and argue and muse and interpret charts and writings and texts, to make sense of the story.

And then there is faith. That thing that can’t be argued, quantified or proved.

Many of us make the effort, rocky as it can be sometimes, inconvenient as it often is, to return home at Christmas.  This may be our own House of David, with a long lineage and tradition, or the homes we have built with our own two hands and with the hands of others who we now claim as family, our familiars.  Those places where we might  seek out the brightness of hope in a dark night.

And suddenly, there it is.  By Christmas Day the light is already returning.  As promised. As always.  This Christmas let me wish each of you that moment when you feel the love and warmth of others.  When your heart expands and you love them back.  When, if only for a twinkling, you find yourself well and truly home.