It's Christmas All Over, Again

Nigella Lawson's Aromatic Slow Roasted Pork for Christmas dinner.  Put it in the day before, you remember, Christmas Eve?  And prior to going to work.  The smell like the best scented candle running throughout the house. The night was calm and my shift was no different than the one before.  There wasn't joyful anticipation of Christmas in the air.  Some.  Fleeting though.  Customers were stressed if they were buying a kitchen.  They were using this precious time for renovations, which couldn't be an easy choice. Its a choice you make when all your other alternatives are gone.  So I tried to offer some compassion.  All the other years I expected customers to be nice to me.  I was the one working, you see.  This year I saw their need for comfort. They were here by some circumstance that made sense to them.  I was just collecting my check.  I was just a warm body filling a slot for money.  As a matter of fact, I wasn't there really at all.  I had checked out much earlier in the week.  I was depressed and shut down. The only place I wanted to be was in my apartment.

There we would eat our traditional Christmas Eve pizza slices and I would start on the appetizers and food prep for tomorrow's meal.  I would pull up my big girl pants and try to be adultlike.  Not a sadsack whimpering empty soul that can only see loneliness and the deepest sadness in Christmas 2015 USA.   I would make a meal to celebrate this holiday and that meal would bring peace, a genuine heartfelt offering to the atmosphere.  Some kindle to the small fire that still burns for some.

That night riding home on my bike passing the lonely dark area that I always dread crossing over from Red Hook to the cheerier Carroll Gardens West, the huge bright full moon was peaking out of the clouds.

As if to say, Christmas IS here, even though it doesn't feel like it.  Even though it is less and less of this magical spiritual day for the world, it can still be what it is to you, privately, in your faith here... and right now.  The day Jesus was born so long ago.  I stopped and watched the sky.  Now seeing the moon appear full, I gasped, knowing in my heart only for one brief second how beautiful it must have been to witness so much hope in a place so unlikely.  A savior here on earth, with us, in the form of a newborn baby.  A gift from God to all who would believe.