Magic

Something magic comes to life during the holidays, although not in the old ways. I remember one Christmas Eve, when I was a little girl. Before I went to sleep in my bed pushed up against the cold wall on the window side of the flat, I heard, in the snowy night outside that window, sleigh bells.

Or maybe it was Mom and Dad, preparing the scene for Christmas morning, when my little sister and my big brother Ronn and I would wake to the decorated tree in the front room, the colored bulbs lit, presents scattered underneath the tree. We waited for Dad to sit, cross-legged, in front of the tree, and one by one, he brought out the gifts and called our names. Dad enjoyed Christmas morning as much as we did, relishing his role as gift-giver.

There’d been magic the night before, also, when I recited my verse in the Christmas Eve pageant at the Evangelical Lutheran Church where I attended Sunday School . Magic, as all the little children recited their verses to a darkened sanctuary lit only by candles – real candles! – across the altar and hanging high on the walls at the side aisles. Magic! After Christmas Eve worship, each child received a box of chocolate-covered cherries, and we’d drive home, me sitting smugly in the back seat of my Dad’s ‘54 Chevy.

I wait for the magic now. Each Christmas, the magic seems to grow dimmer, but I still love the lights on the tree, and I listen to classical Christmas music, hearing the same songs again and again, without tiring of them. I have a few solemn rituals I follow; each season I watch “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a beautiful depiction of Dylan Thomas’ remembrance of his Christmases past.

The magic lessens, with each year, it seems. Life in the Bay Area of California does not afford the cozy nights in a warm, warm house, the wind blowing cold off of Lake Michigan against the windows. Still, it is comforting to sit beside the Christmas tree – a presence of its own in the house – in the early dark evenings, the room lit only by the old-fashioned, multi-colored lights. 

And the season passes quickly, each day shorter than the next, each year flying by – where did the time go? I ask the question of myself as the generations before me must have asked the question, and those generations all gone now, a long time ago.