A Different Kind of Christmas Story
If you and your family celebrate Christmas, that celebration will look very different during the course of a lifetime. Even the family you celebrate the holiday with will most likely change.
When I was married, Christmas was church with the kids on Christmas Eve, then dinner. After the kids were asleep, we’d drink wine, watch A Christmas Carol (the Alastair Sim version, of course), and wrap gifts.
Christmas morning meant kids up early, tearing through wrapping paper, making piles of their toys, and then breakfast.
After the divorce, we still had dinner with the kids, but afterward, I’d go to my house and the kids to theirs.
However, on my side, wine and It’s a Wonderful Life were replaced with scotch and Die Hard.
Church stayed the same, even with the divorce.
The early Mass was always crowded, and I was one of the reasons why. I was what some people call a Chreaster (a person who goes to church only on Christmas and Easter).
Apparently, I was not the only one, since the Catholic service was packed. There were so many people that we never sat in a pew and hovered in the back of the church, shoulder to shoulder, close to the doors for a quick exit.
To be honest, I always felt the Christmas service was a check-the-box task to complete for the holiday, along with dinner and gifts with the kids.
Well, that all changed this year.
Did I mention that I don’t like change?
Arlene (my ex-wife) decided she didn’t want to host Christmas this year. Instead, she rented a house in the Poconos where she, our kids and their significant others, and a good number of her family members would spend the holiday.
My Christmas just moved to Pennsylvania without me, and I envisioned a very quiet and lonely holiday.
Fortunately, I was wrong.
It turned out my daughter and youngest son were not heading to the Poconos until late Christmas Eve night. I would see my daughter later that evening, and my son invited me to join his girlfriend and her family for dinner before Christmas services, which I was also invited to attend.
Dinner was lovely, in a nice restaurant near Princeton, with my son and his girlfriend Maddie’s family (her parents and her brother and his fiancée).
At dinner, we talked and laughed for hours, and it was far from the quiet and lonely Christmas Eve I had envisioned.
But the night was not over. There were still services.
By services, I didn’t mean Catholic, which I am.
No.
We were going to a Quaker meeting for Christmas (which sounded like the title of a Hallmark movie).
Maddie’s dad rode with me from dinner to the Meeting House, since I had no idea where we were going. The back roads were dark and winding, with nothing but woods and open fields.
“If you were going to murder me,” I joked, “this would be the place to do it.”
He laughed and said, “Make a right just ahead.”
For the Meeting House, not the murder.
We parked my car and headed toward the building.
The Meeting House was built sometime in the seventeen hundreds (nearly three hundred years old), all dark wood, with over a dozen pews that all faced toward the middle of the room, and a fireplace.
I felt like I was in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, which was not a bad thing.
Someone from the congregation led the service, and it was from this woman that I knew what to expect over the next hour or so.
First, twenty minutes of silent reflection, then a reading by the group from the Gospel According to Matthew about the birth of Jesus, and it would conclude with a variety of Christmas songs.
One of the big differences between the Catholic and Quaker services is the size. A Catholic Christmas Mass would be filled wall to wall, easily with several hundred people.
Before we began silent meditation, I took a quick head count of the people in the Meeting House.
I turned to tell Maddie, “There are about fifty people here.”
Her face lit up, and she said, “I know, it’s packed!”
In church or any related situation, when asked for a moment of silence, it consisted of me asking God to bless my family, my friends, and my friends’ families. That fills about fifteen seconds, and the last forty-five seconds were me thinking of things I needed to do later that day.
Silence is not my friend. Two seconds after I come home, I turn on the TV just for background noise.
But here, after that first fifteen seconds, the next nineteen minutes and forty-five seconds really took me by surprise.
A few minutes in, I started to have a conversation with myself, or with God, or maybe both (wow, Al, you’re so deep).
A variety of issues crawled across my brain.
I thought about a friend who had gone through serious health issues, but thankfully it looked like the worst was now behind her.
The faces of friends and family I’ve lost over the years popped into my head, as if to come by, say hello, and wish me a Merry Christmas.
Also, friends I’ve lost not to death, but rather by choice or through life’s unique circumstances, stopped in for a visit.
I thought about relationships that never worked out, for one reason or another, over the years.
There was a lot of quiet time in my head, filled with ways I could be better in the new year and beyond.
However, one self-realization stood out front and center within that silence.
I need to stop living in the past.
Or at least stop dragging the past around with me like over sized Samsonite luggage permanently attached to my wrists.
Also, just so you know this wasn’t all some profound moment of self-discovery, the following periodically played in my head.
“So this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year over, and a new one just begun.”
John Lennon, you sneaky bastard.
After the long reflection, each person in the congregation took turns reading a short passage of the Gospel according to Matthew, and then we sang Christmas songs.
Afterwards, we had coffee and cake.
The next day, I drove up to the Poconos and spent Christmas Day with my family.
I don’t like change, but sometimes change is good.
All in all, it may not have been the Christmas I expected (thankfully), but it was the Christmas I needed.
Cover Photo by Amanda DeLuise
