A Great Christmas Story

I do not have a great Christmas story to tell. Every year when the newspaper asks for stories, I want to write one, but I'd have to make a tear-jerker up. I didn't grow up in the Depression, just hoping to get one orange. My mother never spent weeks knitting me an ugly sweater that taught me the true meaning of Christmas.

There was the year I decided there really must be a Santa Claus because I got a talking doll, and I knew things were tough that year because my youngest sister had just been born and my oldest sister was about to get married.

But that's the whole story.

There was also a time when I had a dream on Christmas Eve that my present came out of the fireplace rather than down the chimney--and it was just a woman's high-heeled shoe.

But the next morning, everything was as magically sparkly as always, and a new doll in a buggy awaited me in the living room as usual.

The only true Christmas story I could really tell would be one of consistency. Despite my parents' various economic struggles, every Christmas was pretty much the same. There was always a new doll and a game--or something equivalent. The stockings were always filled with candy and nuts, with an orange in the toe.

Maybe the fact that one Christmas was pretty much like the others IS the great story. In my childhood, Christmas magic could be counted on, year after year.

It is easy for me to see springtime as symbolic of the Resurrection as the flowers grow, the earth thaws, and trees come back to life. I appreciate the natural reminder that there's always another chance for a new start.

But, until I heard the great talk given at church yesterday by one of my neighbors, I didn't realize as well as I do now how snow on a green tree points directly to Jesus and his mission. The whiteness of snow--quite possibly the whitest thing I have ever seen, mercifully covering the leaves we missed raking, the weeds we never got around to pulling. Under snow, our yard looks as good as everyone else's. It's the great winter equalizer.

Snow covers everything indiscriminately, making everything look pure and beautiful. Snow and rain wash the earth, shape and form it--just like the atonement and repentance purify and shape lives. Trees especially look beautiful under snow--both evergreen trees and others. Looking at trees, I think about eternal life, wood, the cross. Snow and trees. If anything around here speaks of sameness in winter, it's snow.

I joke that I'll give each winter 100 days, and then it had better be gone. This is how I cope. That midwinter can be a reminder of the Savior too has somehow escaped me before. But in the bleak moments of life, Christ is what is solid. Christ is what purifies. Christ's sacrifice makes waiting out trials worth it. All can seem dead, but there is beauty even in the stillness. In the seemingly empty winter world, there is still the stuff of purification, of life.

Christina Rossetti's poem, "In the Bleak Midwinter," which is actually a Christmas carol, says, ". . .water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter long ago."

Sameness. Christmas. Life, death. Over and over. New chances to do it again, to do it better. Christmas miracles. No story here, just reflection.

There is something about sameness, even the sameness of winter days, that you can trust. Being able to trust in Christmas and all it means--what greater story can there be?