Christmas. 

This has been a most difficult year for all of us, but as we sit and celebrate the joys of Christmas and our own resilience, let’s remember that the magic and the promise of Christmas still exists in our hearts and our most precious memories.

For me, even the name is magical.   Christmas! It rolls off my tongue and twirls through my thoughts stirring up wonderfully evocative memories of enchanting, never to be forgotten moments.   I remember, as though it was yesterday, a snowy Christmas eve, my dad, his finger to his lips, whispered “Shh, can you hear it?  Santa’s up there.”   He pointed to the roof and, wide-eyed with wonder, we stood perfectly still and listened.  And I heard it.  To this day, I remember it all – hushed silence and then the unmistakable sound of Santa’s sleigh on our roof.  But the magic didn’t end there.  My dad rushed to the window.  “Hurry,” he beckoned, holding back the curtains.  “You can see him.”   And, I did see a flash as his sleigh took to the sky.   I barely slept, my eyes open, my ears …But that was Christmas eve – there was still so much more to come.

And then after what seemed an eternity, it was Christmas morning.  And though the house was still dark, and our parents’ eyes were heavy with sleep, the magic continued.   My senses exploded with the distinctive smell of a new doll, her plastic body just waiting to be held, or the feel of a new book – the crisp pages filled with adventure and escape, the sweet scent of chocolate, unlimited on Christmas (or so we believed), the sound of laughter, of jingling bells, of squeals of delight.   All of that is Christmas to me, and still there   is more.  The scent of roasting turkey permeating the house, the doorbell signaling the arrival of family and friends.   Christmas hums in my memories with a special and simple kind of joy, a joy that I can invoke year-round.

It is these memories that are my favorite Christmas gifts for they return to me each year in the form of sweet sounds and sweeter still scents.  And as I sit myself down on Christmas eve to catch the local TV-news radar update tracking Santa’s global position, I am certain that I hear my dad saying, “Shh, can you hear it?”

And if I am very quiet, I can hear it again.