Thoughts about story hummed all through yesterday, story not as diversion or means of making sense but as lifeline.  

It had been a black morning I couldn’t shake, with blue bite marks on my arm from special-needs Sadie and my stirred-up spirit not letting go of the violent storm. I shook my fists at the thief, the unnamed neurological thing that robs smiling, delighted child and brings a shadow of angst and impulse and then confused regret. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I rock her in my arms, I know, I know.

My insides felt raw, burned and scarred, not unlike after a bad high school breakup. (Note to self: Let me not belittle my teenage girls’ heartaches when they come. The feelings are dire, even if the circumstances are not.)

I knew the day needed a good story. The ugly and the unsettled stayed until I got lost in one. It was family movie night and I forced myself to sit and stare at the TV screen. After about 30 minutes, I was a French girl living on a farm in the war-torn countryside, a soldier flying for the first time, a boy finding out just how brave I could be. After a couple of hours, I was me again, the me who could pick up a Bible and pour over more Story, cry out to the Story-maker, and drift asleep calm.

With the holidays over, it’s time to get back to my story, and I wonder how this one will differ from the first two. It may fall flat on its face, but I sense it will be more sweeping, less small. The stakes will be higher, if I get it right.

I want to get lost in it, not just in my girl, this one named Adele, but in her crazy, other-worldly world. There is method acting. Maybe I will method-write, going around with a Cornwall accent and an (as of yet) undefined mission—in my head only, of course. The fireside and our two dogs and walks with them in my Wellies will help set the atmosphere. All this will translate to a faraway, glazed-over look and unexplained mood swings and more general flakiness than usual.

What if I had to live in reality’s realm all the time? What if while I was driving around town all I had to think about were facts? Do people do that? I don’t know how. Is that bad?

Side note: I’ve developed a movie-watching addiction that greatly annoys The Spouse. I like subtitles with my films, and not just the French ones. It’s hard to hear every word sometimes, especially with British accents (my movies) or fast-talking cop lingo (his). I want to catch every word. “You’re supposed to watch movies, not read them,” Luke groans. (But doesn’t he get tired of “What did he just say?”)

It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. After church it had to go—the tree. Tonight I can’t stand to look at that corner of the room, so dark and sad.

Have I betrayed my beloved Christmas? Should I have nursed that dry old fir through Twelfth Night?

No, it was time. I’m the one who feels betrayed—by the calendar.

With every last pine needle vacuumed (ha! I’ll be finding them for weeks), I went straight to my Milk and Cookies cookbook and started frantically pulling out butter and eggs and chocolate. These cookies weren’t for a party or a church function or a gift—they were for me. Oh, and my family.

Two days ago I was singing along to “The Cherry Tree” carol and fixing and making and baking for a tea for my young nieces and nephews. We’d given them teacups, rescued from antique markets, each one with a glittery invitation (made by my twins) tied with red yarn onto the handle.

Drink out of me
At a Christmas Tea… etc. 

One of my favorite Christmas moments was watching two-year-old Kitty tremble with excitement as she unwrapped her big girl cup. She beamed as she held up the Depression glass, struggling to get her tiny hands around it. Her older sister, Evelyn, now five, was much more adept with her treasure. Evie was that toddling age a few minutes ago. Why does time feel like an enemy?

How can all the reveling be over? What’s left are a few vases of holly and a hallway full of boxes waiting to be put in the attic. And a lot of memories, I suppose.

 I can’t think about those today. It still hurts, the Band-Aid ripping.

 I need another cookie, or three.

The phone rings the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, in between setting the teakettle to whistling and dealing another game of rummy. Mom comes out of her bedroom with a box of Kleenex—a dear friend has died at 48 years old. Her mother has waited to call until after the holiday, even though it happened a week ago.

What is one to think about a quick-witted girl with a crown of strawberry blonde hair and a smattering of freckles who could stay up all hours talking books and ideas but who was troubled always and ultimately drank herself to death? What sense is to be made? God’s on His throne, but this doesn’t feel like His plan. (My feelings on the subject are worthless, I know.) God gives us free will—can we miss the plan He has for us? Is that what happened here?

There are more questions than answers.  This uneasy place is breeding ground for the familiar feeling of wanting to grip tight and take charge. What if she’d been my sister, my best friend? She was sick, so sick. Couldn’t someone have made her get help? I recognize the fallacy of this thinking as fast as the thoughts come. I’m such a fixer. Is this a good thing or a control thing?

Where does one draw the line between faith moving mountains, doing for the least of these, pouring out mercy—and just plain meddling, trying to butt heads with Management?

And what about Management? Does The Boss preordain? Is He a puppeteer of sorts? Or does He let go, shedding tears all along, allowing things to play out in this fallen world but promising to be there, always with us? I used to favor the former, now I lean toward the latter.

But how do I reconcile such so-called allowances with this trust, this believing in my bones God is sovereign? What’s His management style, micro or macro? I know about the sparrow and the hairs on our head. But I don’t understand this lovely girl with a master’s degree from an Ivy League school who never really held down a job but stayed inside an apartment for years and years and didn’t get better but self-destructed. Where’s the redemption, the crosses-to-crowns in that?

We don’t have to figure out why—I’ve long since given up on that game. Or have I? Are these questions simply a big whiny why in disguise?

Was she a Christian? my girls ask. No, their grandmother answers quietly. They look horrified and then hang their heads. Well, we don’t know, I fumble. And we certainly don’t know what she thought as she lay in a hospital bed slipping away. More questions.

As I get older the distance grows between me and the land of black and white, oh comfortable planet but built by fear!

I’m floating around outside that world of dogma, probably swimming in soft theology, but somehow my heart finally camps out here: God is good—all the time.

I think maybe it’s a place to start.

We were getting ready to take Christmas on the road. I confessed to the family after an hour or so of huffing about that it’s hard to shut down the house, topping off vases overflowing with holly and packing cookies into tins, saying good-bye to the dear sights of home until after December 25. Once I’m on the other side (at my parents’ house in the mountains), I’m more than okay with being away for Christmas. In fact, I’m delighted.

There are tins full of cookies I didn’t make, a Christmas beast waiting in the fridge, gifts under the tree, and all the homey touches and traditions I was raised on. Best of all are the faces greeting us at the door.

We got in the car this morning and sighed relief. Everything somehow fit. A lot of care (and work) was put into all the stuff blocking my husband’s view of the road behind. Presents picked out and wrapped, treats baked, dresses pressed, dogs bathed. Mom called as we pulled out, asking me to bring the chest of my grandmother’s old silver I’d absconded, so back we went. Sadie fell apart when Daddy went back inside. Maggie’s hair got pulled. Where to put said silver?

We left. Again. The Spouse said sarcastically,

“Merry Christmas.”

Simplicity indeed. Emma asked as we accelerated,

“Is it hard for the car to move when it’s this loaded down?”

I had to laugh. What a glorious mess.

And so we’ll make a mess at Mom’s meticulously kept place. Sippy cups leaking juice on the floor, crumbs in every chair, shoes and errant socks scattered. Dad will fuss about too many people crowding into the kitchen, and a total of four dogs will vacillate between vying for space on the sofa and barking madly at whatever catches their fancy out the window. Silent Night, indeed!

Would I have it any other way? At this point, anything goes. And tomorrow night after church, with the lights down low, we’ll raise a glass to the king, lord of all this mirth.

I was thinking January-ish thoughts the other day, like gee this bathmat is tattered and I should replace it. White sale!

My jeans sure are feeling tight—I’ll have to either give up sweets or buy new jeans—in January. The dentist called to confirm an appointment for next month. The expiration date on the three cartons of heavy cream in the fridge is for 2012.

How can this be? It’s not even here, but Christmas feels almost over.

This is when I really need to hunker down and focus on Jesus. The parties are behind me, the decorating, the wonderful whirlwind of it all. It’s time for family and family and more family. (The kids are out of school for weeks, and I’m glad. Mostly.) It’s not my birthday, it’s not my birthday…

How was your Christmas? People ask this well into the new year. My Christmas? At some level, Christmas just is.

In my efforts to have the best, holiest, most wonderful time of the year, I lose sight of the unchangeable. Love came down and put on humility and lived and died for us. For me.

The Spouse will do what he does every year after Christmas. I’ll cry while I pack away ornaments and talk about how flat and dull and sparse the house feels, and he’ll look at me and say, “Jesus still came.”

Jesus in January. Yes, of course. The crutch of Christmas will have been yanked away, but I’ll still be walking with the One I love, and, better yet, who loves me. Even when I’m pouting, or, in this case, pre-pouting.

 “One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bull-dozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.” ~ O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”

Books, perhaps, run a close second to Christmas music in the way they illuminate the season. And, as with music, (for me) old books make better friends.

It’s funny how fire and words beg more urgently during the busiest season of the year. But a December without a good Temple Bailey tale read while toasting my toes is like a Coke without fizz. I like these sentimental stories probably first published in a ladies journal. Bess Streeter Aldrich’s “Bid the Tapers Twinkle” is a favorite, too.

We’ve read out loud year after year Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” the story of a young boy and his elderly relative against the world. The pair are armed with fruitcakes, a dog named Queenie, and a keen sense of what Christmas and childhood and family are for. Peter Marshall’s sermons, “Let’s Keep Christmas” and “Invitation by Jesus” are wonderful read out-louds as well.

I dare anyone to read aloud A Bird’s Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin. Bringing tears (or ugly sobs) every time, it’s a story of a little girl who shows us all a thing or two about keeping Christmas—even from one’s sickbed. Lloyd C. Douglas’ Home for Christmas is a sweet glimpse of the not-so-distant past. And it wouldn’t be Christmas without Dickens, of course. Far shorter is the “Three Stockings” chapter in Jan Struther’s lovely collection of essays about family life during WWII England, Mrs. Miniver. It’s full of nuggets. Early (too early) Christmas morning, our heroine reflects after being pounced on in bed by children eager to start the festivities,

“There were sounds of movement in the house; they were within measurable distance of the blessed chink of early morning tea. Mrs. Miniver looked towards the window. The dark sky had already paled a little in its frame of cherry-pink chintz. Eternity framed in domesticity. Never mind. One had to frame it in something, to see it at all.”

I do goofy things at Christmastime. I don’t know what possessed me years ago to put on an antebellum-style green satin dress and prance over to the twins’ third-grade classroom to read the Christmas chapter of Little Women. The teacher had asked me to read—she hadn’t bargained for a crazy lady in costume.

I’d had a devil of a time deciding between Alcott’s gem and the Little House chapter that describes Mr. Edwards coming through a snowstorm with Santa gifts. Though life was hard, don’t we long for that prairie simplicity? Laura and Mary are thrilled with receiving odds and ends like a tin drinking cup, a penny and an orange. If only we could be satisfied with such!

Christmastime brings an excuse to do a lot of childish things. Who wouldn’t want to at least try to evoke Boris Karloff when they’re reading to young ears “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”?  Our copy of the Grinch wears our affection with scotch taped pages and a torn cover. That’s why there’s a stack of children’s books that belong to Mama, not offspring. The untouchables sit on a tall empire chest in the den, out of reach of sticky little hands. The pile includes

O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” with dream-like illustrations by Lisbeth Zwerger

Clement Clarke Moore’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas” with painting by Tasha Tudor

“Corgiville Christmas” by Tasha Tudor

“The Little Fir Tree” by Margaret Wise Brown

“The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree” by Gloria Houston with pictures by Barbara Cooney

Isn’t it remarkable how so many of the good Christmas stories are sad? Isn’t that true of the sound of many of the carols as well? Christmas has its melancholy side, and this used to puzzle me. It doesn’t anymore, and today I embrace the pathos. After all, the joyous birth of the One so waited for leads to death on a cross. And then the glorious resurrection. And so it goes with stories—“crosses to crowns,” C.S. Lewis said.  If you’re looking, The Story is echoed in the unlikeliest places.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ~ Philippians 4:8

When I was three-ish and went to see my first play, some community theatre version of Winnie-the-Pooh, I caused a big scene when the curtain fell, sobbing loudly because it was over.

December’s treats inevitably end. It’s over. I didn’t throw a tantrum, but I did tear up as I walked down the back steps of my friend Rachel’s house yesterday afternoon. Another Christmas Book Club, come and gone.

Maybe this one was especially sweet because last year we were missing our dear Rachel, who was having a grand adventure living in an English village. Now her family is adding their elbow grease and artistic touches to a big Victorian near Marietta’s square. When I arrived at the new old house, Rachel was still upstairs in a last-minute wardrobing frenzy (what does one wear when it’s 72 degrees at Christmas?), so I sat and listened to the clock on the table tick and stroked the head of Sebastian, a fawn-colored greyhound. It was prime looking time. I could soak in the wonderful details of this house and its décor.

Soon the kitchen was filled with laughter and good smells. The six of us lunched on braised short ribs in a winey sauce that made me want to lick my plate (I wouldn’t!), popovers, latkes and crisp green beans. My sister-in-law, Lori, gifted us with her homemade coconut ice cream, the sort with black specks of vanilla bean throughout and toasted coconut on top. We took our first spoonfuls and mmm-d our delight. Lori nodded and smiled slyly. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

We talked about this and that and Jesus and Christmas and Jesus again. We agreed that the trappings and trimmings of Christmas weren’t at all at odds with the spirit of the thing but all wonderfully and magically intertwined. We chalked certain things up to mystery and marveled at how much we don’t know about our great, big God. Jenijoy remarked, “There are tenants, and there are ponderables.” And then Lori brought us “down low,” she laughed, with a funny story about her children and the mischevious elf who ended up almost, just almost, convincing the adults in the family he was up to late-night tricks. It’s lovely to believe—and to almost believe.

Having had our fill of food and killed two hours, we adjourned to more comfortable seats in the den, where we had good stiff tea from Harrod’s, provided by Lanier, who had recently visited the Mother Land, and more talk, and an agreement to postpone our discussion of George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss so we could do it justice in January.

As is our tradition, Lanier read a Christmas tale out loud, but this time she treated to us to a gorgeous short story she had written herself. Our little gifts were passed around, including antique brooches brought back from Devon by Lanier, each one unique.

The greatest treasure was the hearts in that little circle, each one in love with many of the same things—beauty and sisterhood and books—but mostly with the Author of all we admire.

I can’t remember a worse December
Just watch those icicles form!
What do I care if icicles form?
I’ve got my love to keep me warm.
~ Irvin Berlin
 

I sent an email this afternoon to my husband, my groom, the man of my dreams:

Hey, have you seen the lint-brush?

As I hit SEND, I shook my head. Is this what it’s come to?

Before we were married, I remember missing that boy at Christmas like crazy. The day wasn’t quite complete without him, but I tried not to pout. I might’ve pouted a little. I waited for the phone to ring (this was back before cell phones or free long distance). One year, a few months before we got engaged, I had my hopes up during a pre-Christmas visit. Over a romantic meal, he presented me with… a sweater. A grey sweater.

Still, things were so holding-hands-at-the-Nutcracker back then.

Seventeen years later, I’m still madly in love with The Spouse. But I send him emails about lint-brushes, and we stay up late Christmas Eve snapping at each other while we wrap a few last-minute gifts for the kids. There are slippery spots we fall down on every year, like packing the car to go to my parents’ (Luke calls my pile of clothes “Mt. St. Laura’s”).

We even argue on the way to dinner parties sometimes. I’m in a red dress, he’s dressed in his best suit, we smell good. What’s there to fight about? But we can air grievances all the way from our driveway to the hosts’, and some of our friends live almost an hour away. (Friends: You know who you are. Don’t we do a good job of smiling pretty despite the fuss we’ve just had?)

Mostly we’re just worn out: “You want to get  Sadie up? I got her up last time,” or, “Could you take the dogs out while I wipe this puddle off the floor?”

But my husband likes to remind me we’re not roommates, two people who live together to share chores and expenses. And he’s right.

This Christmas I’m going to try to remember how I ached when he was eating coconut cake in Georgia while I was eight hours north in Kentucky. I’m going to count myself a lucky girl because we get to be in the same room at the same time, watching our children open gifts we bought and wrapped together (more or less). We get to travel in the same car, eat the same holiday food, sleep in the same bed. We get to reminisce about Christmases past and look forward to Christmases to come. We get to clink our glasses, wink at each other from across a relative-filled room, share an armchair if there’s a shortage of seats. And if we happen to find ourselves under a sprig of mistletoe…

Last night, after we each had a crazy busy day (is there any other kind?), we met for a drink at a favorite restaurant before the twins’ orchestra concert. We had 25 minutes to reconnect. I’m not sure that was enough, but it was something. And later, during the seventh grade’s rendition of “Feliz Navidad,” we held hands.

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

Guess what I did to celebrate Christmas last night?

I slept for nine hours. That’s right, nine. With three out of five family members sniffling and coughing, I’m downing water and vitamin C and getting some rest.

That’s possible right now more than at any other time in the month. I call this time, around the 10^th or so of December, The Big Phew.

Right now it’s as common as “how are you,” folks asking folks, “Are you ready for Christmas?” What that translates to is, “Have you shopped for everyone on your list, or are you one of the suckers who still has to face the mall?”

Whether you’ve bought for everyone or not is not a measure of whether you’re ready for Christmas. Everyone has different shopping styles. Some people, like my husband, need the last-minute pressure. I guess he falls into the “not” ready for Christmas category. I need to formulate a flip answer to this question, like, “Yes, in fact, I feel peaceful and prepared to welcome Emmanuel. My heart is bursting with joy.” But that would make people hate me. I guess the other answer, “Yes, I’ve finished my shopping” might do the same.

Honestly, I love The Big Phew. There’s still lots of going and doing and baking and wrapping to be done, but the decorating is done (although I’ll haul in more fresh holly and greens later on), and we’ve had some time to breathe. This week I have time to pour myself into others, however God leads. Tomorrow I’ll have the honor of lunching with an 87-year-old. And we’ve got time to entertain angels, to bless the poor, to really get down to the Christmas nitty-gritty. And have loads of fun, too.

I’m resisting the temptation to add to this week, to over-schedule and overdo. I’m determined not to. Because next week is the last week of school, and if you’re a mom you know there’s no relief in that. Mid-terms, school parties and concerts, teacher gifts—it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Maybe I need a nap.

I can’t add much to this little dandy by The Spouse. As much as I enjoy parties and visits to church and being with friends, I do love Christmas on the homefront best. I will say that children are at their chattiest at Christmastime. I cherish some of the things they come up with. We’re still laughing at this one from when Maggie was younger: “Jesus can’t bring presents at Christmas. But Santa can.” This year Sadie has sympathy for Rudolph (weren’t the the other reindeer and Santa himself perfectly beastly on account of a red nose?). Sadie goes around saying (overly) sadly, “Poor Rudolph.” There’s only one thing she wants you to reply: “Yes, poor Rudolph.”  

My wife loves Christmas—and not in the everyday, run-of-the-mill way a lot of people love it. No, Laura loves Christmas with a consuming intensity that leaves her blue when it is over.

For example, Laura enjoys Christmas music so much that she imposes on herself an absolute embargo on playing it before Thanksgiving. Unless, of course, she really needs a pick-me-up a few days (or weeks) early. Then, the embargo goes out the window, at least long enough for a King’s College Choir disc or two.

My wife loves decorating for Christmas, too, even when she must do the same thing more than once. She dresses our mantle with magnolia leaves and pine fronds, replacing pieces as they turn brown.

As for me, I play a very limited role in the decorating process, offering zero creative input and handling mostly tasks requiring some limited measure of brute strength.

Tedious and dangerous jobs also fall to me, including the Advent wreath. Here, I have the unenviable task of turning a pile of unruly boxwood clippings into a serviceable wreath, working with only a circular frame and a hazardous old spool of florist wire. Every year, I cross my bloodied fingers that my tetanus shot is still current.

Laura also loves Christmas trees. Eons ago, we were a one-tree family, piling our then-young twin girls into the minivan and picking out the perfect tree at a picturesque wooded nursery. We would then spend multiple evenings stringing popcorn and cranberries while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and lesser holiday classics. Once, Laura’s tree was featured in the newspaper.

Several years ago, we added a second tree, for the twins’ room. Maggie and Emma, now 13, really enjoy the lights and aroma, along with having a tree of their own.

In 2007, when the economy was barreling along like an eager Escalade on Georgia 400 outside rush hour, two trees were suddenly not enough. I came home to find a third waiting to go in the dining room.

If that doesn’t sound odd, a better sense of our dining room may help. Ours is a modest-sized house, at least in our zip code. Even when cut down by half and squeezed into a corner, the bulging white pine seemed to have its own gravitational field.

The dining room tree went out with the economic boom and is at least as unlikely to return anytime soon.

Although her passion for Christmas is extraordinary, Laura is not without kindred spirits. She welcomes the season by hosting two dear friends for an Advent tea. Over brunch, Lanier, Rachel and Laura look forward to the coming holiday. In January, they assemble again to console each other.

Laura loves the external things of Christmas, all we can see, hear, touch, feel, smell and taste. But there is more she loves about it, unseen and mystical. To whom, after all, do the songs, traditions and rituals point us but a baby born in a stable two millennia ago? As such, there is great joy in Christmas. But there is also a certain melancholy spirit, an acknowledgment that the birth of Jesus begins His journey to the cross.

A few years ago, we were visiting Laura’s parents outside Greenville, South Carolina, and our young daughter Sadie became alarmingly listless. On Christmas Eve, Laura got all ready for church before choosing a different destination. We spent the evening with Sadie at Greenville Memorial Hospital.

It was past midnight when we shared Christmas Eve dinner back at Laura’s parents’ house. Delicious food and a bit of wine, by candlelight. It wasn’t how we had planned to spend Christmas Eve, but it was somehow perfect nonetheless.

Sadie, for her part, doesn’t understand all the season’s nuances and implications, but she is catching her mother’s enthusiasm.

In July, Sadie was still looking for Christmas trees at the local garden center. Months earlier, she had thrilled at the sight of the trees, and we had paused several times to linger among the man-made boughs, sprayed-on snow, and inflatable, light-up Santas.

By September, Sadie had figured out that, as she put it, “Not Christmas now.” A month later, with Halloween looming, she knew what she wanted: “Christmas come back.”

It was Laura’s wish then as well—and it will be again before we know it.