From “The 26th of December,” by Galway Kinnell

Irregular life begins. Telephone calls,
Google searches, evasive letters,
complicated arrangements, faxes,
second thoughts, consultations,
e-mails, solemnly given kisses.

***

So (slowly) it does, on this most relaxed day of the year.

Enjoy. And don’t rush. Irregular life will still be there tomorrow.

From “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” by Dylan Thomas

All the Christmases roll down towards the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.

***

My family stores our ornaments in a couple of boxes (not large) in the attic. There’s no apparent rhyme or reason to the storage system, and the boxes only get more crowded each year as we add another few ornaments.

Each year, we open the boxes (and, in recent years, a couple of bottles of beer), and plunge our hands in. As we gently lift the ornaments out of their haphazard nesting places, each brings a flood of memories and particular associations.

There are some that I look forward to hanging on the tree each year, like the little bear in the hot air balloon. I have no idea where that one came from and it’s not technically mine, but I bonded with it early and can’t remember a Christmas without it. As a young child in school, any Christmas tree I drew would have a handful of nondescript colored circles on it, plus one hugely oversized and highly detailed hot air balloon dangling from one side.

And that’s the magic of Christmas, isn’t it? All the years like so many ornaments nestled in the box of traditions and rituals, so that you can plunge your hand into any particular holiday and pick up a memento of another one. Flakes upon flakes of Christmases past make up the snowbanks of memory that we reach into with every ornament hung, every stocking opened, every dish passed around the table.

Whatever you bring out this year, may it bring joy.

From “The Rebel Jesus,” by Jackson Browne

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

***

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” (Lk 2:1, KJV)

The story of Christmas starts with caesar, for it is this decree that sends a young couple journeying back to Bethlehem, an inn, and a manger.

Specifically, it starts with the first true caesar, Augustus, who transformed the last vestiges of the Roman republic into the empire. And so the birth of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes is juxtaposed against the birth of the most powerful state (and the most powerful ruler) yet seen in history.

Today, of course, we juxtapose the image of a baby gentle, meek, and mild against the crush of commerce and protestations of power from high office.

An odd pairing, to be sure — but the image of a baby is no doubt less threatening to everything that’s sprung up around the holiday than would be the image of what the baby would become: a rebel with an agenda so radical we’re still trying to make sense of it 2,000 years later.

“The church is not a reasonable idea,” writes Brian Doyle. “We forget this.”

Indeed we do. And yet it is perfectly reasonable to drive our SUVs to church to hear the old just-so stories told again before commencing 24 hours of glorious excess.

In its own weird way, that is a reasonable idea — and certainly an enjoyable and treasured one. But even as we render unto caesar (or to commerce) what is theirs, it is worth pausing to ask the unreasonable, rebellious questions.

After all, should it be completely unreasonable to expect slightly better answers after all those years?

***

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

From “Proverbs and Canticles” (IV), by Antonio Machado

Let us give time to time:
that the vessel overflow
first you must let the water brim.

***

When I arrived at my parents’ house for Christmas, they were watching The Family Stone, which has become an annual tradition among us.

There’s a scene when Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) is at the local watering hole with Ben (Luke Wilson), and she finally begins to let down her hair. Meredith just can’t figure out why Ben’s sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) still has it in for her: “I took her to the nicest restaurant I know,” Meredith wails, “and she didn’t say a word to me!”

If you know the movie, you know how uptight Meredith is. Her credit limit probably exceeds the entire Stone family’s income, and her modus operandi is essentially to buy perfection. If I take you to the nicest restaurant in New York, her thinking goes, you can’t not like me.

Of course that’s not true. We recognize in an instant — without even consciously thinking about it — whether a gift is given in the spirit of generosity or miserliness. Generosity comes from a feeling of abundance (no matter how little you have); someone like Meredith, who can never have enough of anything, can be miserly even at high dollar values.

Heading into a week of often high-pressure giving, let’s try to first let the water brim.

From Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger

[T]he ruinous thing about growing up is that we stop creating mysteries where none exist, and worse, we usually try to deconstruct and deny the genuine mysteries that remain.

***

Where does mystery exist in this season?

Sometimes it’s hard to spot under all the hustle and bustle of The Season.

But, as we move from The Season to the holidays proper, there’s plenty of mystery: the everyday miracles of safe arrivals, warm meals prepared and served with care, leftovers, the way you can eat mince pie for breakfast and stay in your pajamas all day and, today, it’s OK.

In the midst of all this, there is still the dull ache, the longing for the mysteries we constructed around these days as children and the deep search for genuine mysteries to fire our mature imaginations the way cookies and milk that disappeared overnight once did.

And then there is the question that hovers, sometimes just outside our little circles of light and sometimes inside them, as when, late at night, no is is stirring (not even a mouse), and you look at the tree defiantly blazing all its little lights against the dark, and wrap the blanket a little tighter, and wonder: where have the years gone, and where will the next one take you?

***

Late nights by the tree.
Tea. A book. No one stirring.
Peace on earth. Goodwill.

From “Winter in the Rockies,” by Chelsea Dingman

I’m listening now, as water
like a sleeping child wrestles
with the blankets pulled over
its face, waiting to see
which one of us will wake.

***

Today is the solstice, a day recognized from ancient times as a powerful and magical time, when some combination of ritual and miracle would turn the world back toward the light and people knew spring and crops would come again.

We’ve forgotten all that now. We take for granted that the earth will turn and seasons change. The Oak King and the Holly King no longer fight their ancient battle but lie both frozen in legend. We can get in our cars on a whim and buy tomatoes at the grocery store.

And yet.

And yet we light our fires, go a-wassailing — or lie at home, blankets pulled snug, trusting, even in the bleak midwinter, that we and the world will both wake to spring.

From The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

***

I can’t remember where I read it, but I’ve always remembered a line about how funny it can be to return to your old books from high school or college and to see the margins full of exclamation marks and “Yes!”s.

Ever since, I’ve laughed at myself a little whenever I pull an old book off the shelf and find just such ephemera of a lifelong reader learning at last to read with a pen — that is, to read for meaning and connection.

These days, the two most common marks in my margins are “ph,” which notes a well-wrought phrase I wish to remember, and cf. ____________, which of course means to compare with another author, book, or idea.

Instead of reading for agreement or amazement, it’s a way of reading for patterns: which ancient stories keep showing up, and how each author takes them and turns them just a little differently in his or her hands.

From “Just Beyond Yourself,” by David Whyte

That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.

That’s how
you know
you have
to go.

That’s
how you know.

Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be.

***

I first heard this poem juxtaposed with Antonio Machado’s famous “Caminante, No Hay Camino:”

“Traveler, there is no path; / you make the path by walking.”

And, when you look back, there is again no path: “only a ship’s wake on the sea.”

Even if it’s true that we can only get there at walking speed, it’s equally true that we can get there only by walking.

The point on the horizon ahead where the path vanishes is always receding before us. And it is, as always, where we need to be.

This we know — and so must go.

From “This is Water,” by David Foster Wallace

… [H]ere’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

***

This is freedom. And what we choose to worship will determine whether we use this fundamental freedom to progress to real freedom, or freely choose to worship something that will make us unfree (or eat us alive, in David Foster Wallace’s phrase).

We’re all endowed with and worthy of this freedom to choose what to worship. The question is whether we can become adequate to it.

From “Seanchaí,” by Brian Doyle

Shout the thing that must be said.
What were you about? Why did people love
You? What can they keep of who you were?

***

Last evening, after returning from my uncle’s memorial, I curled myself into my corner of the couch to watch a movie with my housemates.

Happily, we landed on Song of the Sea, a beautifully hand-painted animated film adaptation of an old Irish legend. One of the legendary fairy folk encountered in the story is the Great Seanchaí, the old storykeeper, who holds the history of the world in the white hairs of the beard that flows endlessly from his face.

That, of course, reminded me of this proem about the job of a eulogist. Having just given a short impromptu one of my own the evening before, I was moved again to read Brian’s description of the seanchaí:

“You are not the show.
You are the one chosen to say what everyone
Is thinking. This is an ancient task and honor.
You are the tongue in every mouth. In Gaelic,
The seanchaí, the storyteller, the storycatcher.
The rememberer, the singer of what is crucial.”

In the film, the little boy Ben is led out of the dark cavern of the Great Seanchaí by a thread of his beard that contains his sister’s story. “Be careful,” he’s warned. “Don’t break it.”

That’s how we find and tell the thing that must be said. A single strand, glowing, fragile. If you pluck it, you can’t keep it. The only way out is to catch it up ever so gently and follow it where it leads.