Christmas, One Person at a Time
/The Boston Globe
A woman is tormented by footsteps in the apartment above hers. She pounds on her ceiling with a broom. She screams "Shut up!" out the window. Finally, she runs up the stairs, broom in hand, to confront whatever monster is above her, infringing on her quiet. What she sees makes her stop in her tracks. "He's the one making my ceiling shake?" she asks, incredulous, her anger melting like snow on a coat.
The monster, she discovers, is a barefoot boy just 20 months old.
"He's so cute," she says. "Now I feel bad about yelling.”
And that's how it works. You meet a stranger, then you have a conversation, and attitudes change. Unacceptable behavior becomes, well, understandable.
And how is this a Christmas story?
We put faces on strangers at this time of year. It's the season's gift. The poor. The homeless. Old people. Sick people. Lonely people. Even cranky, pain-in-the-neck people. We take the time to look at them.
A child born 2,000 years ago is responsible for this.
I heard a song last week, "Mary, Did You Know?"
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? Did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
The song made me think about the late Father Bill Coen, a pastor in Canton and several other area towns, and how every year at this time he would tell the story of the Incarnation, not from a religious perspective but from a human one.
Imagine a girl of about 14, who has never strayed far from her village, being visited by an angel and told that God wants her to be the mother of his son. Imagine her fear and bewilderment. Still, the girl accepts the angel's pronouncement "Yes. Thy will be done." because her faith is stronger than her fear.
And after the angel leaves? Mary has to find her fiance and tell him of her pregnancy. A visiting angel is a hard enough story to sell, Father Coen would quip. But Mary handled this. And it's a testament to Joseph's love for her that he handled it too.
Mary, did you know that all these many years later we would still be telling your story?
A few Christmases ago, a man e-mailed with his own holiday story. He was on his way to Circuit City to buy a pricey TV for his family. He'd saved all year to do this. But when he arrived at the store, he didn't go in. He continued driving to a home where there had been a tragedy a few weeks before. And he put the money in an envelope and put it in the mailbox.
"I hope they got it," he wrote. "I thought on the way home that maybe I should have rung the bell and handed it to them. But I wanted it to be anonymous.”
The child born in a manger who changed the world two millennia ago is still changing the world, because Christmas is the reason people do these things.
People grumble that Christmas is too commercial and that nobody pays attention to the real meaning anymore. But isn't this the real meaning? Thinking about people and helping them, looking up from our own small lives and looking around?
The radio station Oldies 103.3 collected nearly a half-million dollars for the Make a Wish Foundation just by asking listeners for help. Pine Street Inn has had so many volunteers this season that people have been asked to call back in January. My Brother's Keeper is wrapping and giving Christmas gifts to 1,427 families, 3,977 children, and 1,932 adults.
Everywhere, people are giving.
Candles in the windows give light. Greeting cards give pleasure. Phone calls "I was thinking of you" give joy. Parties. Concerts. Pageants. Presents.
They are all about giving.
Nothing stays the same. We grow up. Our children grow up. Friends come and go. People we love die. The only thing that's eternal is the generosity of spirit that springs up at this time of year.
Christmas is commercial. It's hectic. It's more than it needs to be and less than it should be. Because, like everything else, it is imperfect.
But it's magic, too, because no one is a stranger at Christmas. We take time to look at people and to see them.
And we reach out and help, one person at a time.
