Yesterday the sun hid behind the clouds and the sharply cold air caught us up in the reality of late November, almost December, and the coming Christmas Holidays. For those of us who celebrate Christmas, Advent began this week and I am remembering the wonder and awe of the Advent of my childhood.
We attended parochial school, and so the preparations for Advent and Christmas were couched in the language of the church. We were to prepare for a celebration of the birth of Jesus by praying and doing good works. Prayers were easy. We went to mass every morning, prayed in school and we prayed as a family every night with a long list of petitions for sick relatives and friends and for our own “special intentions.”
I can just imagine what my special intentions were. I had these “wants” that included a “bride doll,’ an umbrella and a purse, all outside the realm of possibility in the real world. Still, we believed that the Karma of good and evil would work itself out on Christmas Eve, when Santa came and delivered our rewards and so, as difficult as it is for four children, each born one year apart, to get along, we tried to be good. For my parents, it only took a word about Santa and our sibling squabbling would stop. But I will also bet that plans for future retribution were being quietly hatched … we weren’t angels. But for those few years of absolute belief, we were consumed by the desire to do good and pray, feeling manifestly connected to something much larger than ourselves. There was this safety in belief, in practice.
My Dad, who worked as a passenger representative for the B&O Railroad, sent hundreds of Christmas cards to people on his contact list. He would spend hours signing the cards and addressing the envelopes. I watched this process, lusting with the oldest child’s desire to participate. Could I help? At some point, my father acquiesced and sat me down at the big round oak table in the dining room with a fountain pen, a list of people and blank envelopes. I was overwhelmed with pride.
I was growing up and changing what was my reality, away from something so precious that I now cherish even the smallest memory. It was then, when I was about 8 or 9 and came to know the truth about Santa and I was invited to help my parents trim the tree, that pride, the knowing challenged the safe harbor of Advent. Growing into that adult world’s reality brought pride, while that indescribable, sparkling something was getting even farther away. It was as if I were trying to go home to a place I couldn’t find.
Through the years that passed, Christmas has always been special at our house. Still that something, that magical sense of belonging had been lost. But the circle turns and that miraculous something lived again with our children’s wide-eyed wonder and joy at the Christmases we made for them. Time passes yet and marvelously; it is soon to begin again with our grandchildren. Maybe you can never go home to that childhood faith again, but you can peek in the windows of your memories and see in them through your children and grandchildren’s eyes. What a gift!
