All around the tree, stacked and balanced mid-way up the wall, the space in the nook next to the stairwell was filled by presents and plastic limbs. There rested the results from two months spent in stores on two sides of the state line searching for the best deals on clothing and toys. Some packages waited under the lowest boughs nearly a month and yet never managed to collect dust. Either honery children who took them in hand hoping to find a clue as to what they contained or their thoughtful mother rearranging them as more boxes of all shapes and sizes joined the stacks until late Christmas Eve had saved them from gathering anything other than imagination. That so much could fit in such a confined area was a miracle in this season of magic, but not nearly as miraculous as how little time it took to dismantle it all. (more…)
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The Manger
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
In this month marked by magnificent color and houses draped with glorious lights, it’s a humble display a quarter-mile up a country road that brings our children the most delight. Every year the appropriations are set in the same place. The manger scene and its various figures carved from wood are set in the foreground and the flood light placed at just an angle to cast the bodies’ shadows smooth and dark against a broad barn wall backdrop. Though the caricatures of the wisemen and Jesus and his Earthly parents are obviously one-dimensional – their faces and clothing painted in vivid color visible during the day – at night, only their shadows fall as real around them as they might have Christmas night. (more…)
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Cold this terribly frigid can begin to wear on the senses and the perception of reality. In July, the walk to the neighbor’s house directly behind the back fencerow lasts maybe 30 seconds. No roads have to be crossed and there is nothing to impair the trip except, maybe, a poorly timed lawn sprinkler. Only about 100 steps are needed to follow the sidewalk past a long extended garage and up the driveway to the Beauhop’s front door. (more…)
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Santa kept his optimism there among the fenced storefronts and darkened window glass. The line to see him had dried up an hour earlier and, even then, it was a short wait. He sat alone in his padded chair at a clearing in the mall made up to resemble his workshop space at the North Pole. Children once waited nervously and impatiently with parents here during Christmases past, but now the halls and waiting area were filled with nothing but loud carpet. (more…)
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She is only half-a-body taller than the tree’s lowest branches and she looks up into its lights with real majesty, in a way not at all like she’s looked at anything before. (more…)
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