The boxes and bows are sorted and stowed away. I’ve found most of the teenage mutant ninja turtles that hid in my house after Christmas morning. The tsunami wave that is the holidays has peaked and begun to ebb.
What remains is the holiday table. The gathering of kinfolk around a roast or casserole, foods heavier than my usual fare but tasty and festive. Some of these meals have been eaten in chaos, while babies throw their cups on the floor and preschoolers pick at buttered noodles. But others have been nibbled in blissful adults-only configurations. I’ve enjoyed both of these arrangements!
I wish the holiday table would remain indefinitely. Luckily for my waistline, it does not.
Once again the days have passed, the splendid ones and the trying ones. Once again we’ve come back to this point, which is for me, and for many, the great pause. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. Soon to be followed by New Year’s Day and the delicious week in between. Once again I’ll re-run this blog post, one I wrote in 2011. Merry Christmas!
12/24/11
Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper’s paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we’ve ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.
This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the banister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.
By the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the banister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.
Christmas doesn’t take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that.
It’s been a warm and rewarding holiday season, time not just for writing (I finished a couple of projects recently) and buying gifts (I’m still wrapping them!) but also for Christmas magic, for concerts, films, singalongs and, on Sunday, a performance of the Nutcracker Ballet.
Not just any Nutcracker, but one performed by the same troupe Suzanne danced with. And I attended with Suzanne and her daughter, who’s almost the same age her mother was when she started class. A double treat.
There were the familiar tunes, in some cases even familiar costumes. After one dance, Suzanne whispered, “iI’s the same choreography!”
I took ballet class as an adult, and tap class not that long ago, so I understood the difficulty of the moves I saw before me. Not just the lifts, which never failed to win applause for the high-school-aged boys who executed them, but for the pirouettes, arabesques and countless other moves that happened throughout the program. For the strength and balance and grace they require and the beauty that results.
Human effort, set to music. Lights and laughter and applause. It was a very sweet Nutcracker indeed.
(Two of my companions from last year’s Nutcracker.)
I was driving south as the sun set on the shortest day of the year, which meant I couldn’t ogle the sky as much as I would have liked. I certainly couldn’t take a picture. But I did see on my left a sunset of rare beauty.
Unlike the one above, snapped seven years ago in Williamsburg, this one was primarily yellow-orange in hue. Crepuscular rays radiated from the horizon like spotlights. The afterglow was warm and radiant. It took my mind off the biting wind we’d had all day, off the shortness of the day itself.
Winter offers spectacular sunsets. If I better understood meteorology, I would know the scientific reason for this. Instead, I see it as a form of compensation. Winter owes us this, I think. It takes our light and tests our mettle, but if we pay attention, it offers revelatory moments. Last night’s solstice sunset was one of those.
“Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?” wrote Henry Ward Beecher. It’s a quotation I’ve always heeded. Even though I read voraciously, I generally stick with library books either in hard copy or online through the Libby app. Only when I’m absolutely positive that I must own the volume do I buy it, and usually online after some comparison book shopping.
Still, there are times when I venture out to a brick-and-mortar bookstore, which I’m glad still exists in my neighborhood. Yesterday I enriched Barnes and Noble considerably. I allow myself to buy books new and at full price only when I’m giving them away. One of these books was written by a friend and former colleague, and I’m glad to have helped her out.
Besides, you never know where the books you buy (or for that matter, the books you write) will land. Yesterday, while having coffee with friends, one of them whipped out a copy of Single File, a book I co-authored eons ago. It was at the beginning of my freelance career and I scarcely think about the book anymore, but there it was. My friend found it in her house while she was going through things. I signed it with a flourish and we all had a good laugh.
Meanwhile, the books I bought need to be wrapped. I’ll get to that soon.
The children were ready to leave the car by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the National Zoo. As with most holiday events in D.C., getting there took longer than we thought it would. But temperatures were above freezing (barely) and everyone was excited to see the lights.
Which we did. Sort of. At least I snapped a few photos and can enjoy them now, in the warmth and safety of my home office. But at the event itself, well, it was all about keeping tabs on the kiddos, who ran ahead, lagged behind and otherwise gave me heart palpitations.
Because, of course, the Zoo Lights only shine at night. And though the displays seemed endless, there were stretches in between where it was, well, dark. And keeping track of three bouncing preschoolers in the dark is even more difficult than keeping track of them in daylight. (At least we didn’t have to hunt for the babies, who were ensconced in separate strollers.)
Zoo Lights features a maze, a light tunnel and a carousel, as well as lions and tigers and kangaroos and pandas. Not the real animals — they slept through the festivities — but replicas in light and plastic. We barely skimmed the surface of the offerings.
As we walked, the moon rose, adding natural light to the equation. But I still found myself counting kiddos every few minutes. It was that kind of night. Beautiful, but not serene. Kind of a zoo, you might say. With lights.
Think of it as a large shower with superb acoustics — the kind that frees you up to belt out a tune — or as a way to release holiday stress in song. Every year the Reston Singers offers members of the community the chance to sing along to Handel’s Messiah. And every year, a few hundred people take them up on it.
Last night’s concert featured exquisite soloists, robust alto and soprano sections, and enough tenors and basses to make do. Together, we made our way through “Glory to God,” “For He Shall Purify,” “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and other choruses.
The big kahuna came at the end, and that was, of course, the “Hallelujah Chorus.” By then we were in fine fettle. We’d warmed up our pipes and could release our inner divas. “King of kings. Forever and ever! And Lord of Lords. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”
When I stood to leave there was a lone tenor behind me. He admitted that he had gotten goosebumps from the experience. I admitted that I had, too. The Singalong Messiah was a high-octane dose of seasonal cheer.
(From a 2023 professional “Messiah” performance. I took no photos last night.)
Today we celebrate the birthdays of two eminent beings: Ludwig von Beethoven and Copper the dog. One of them the classical composer whose works revolutionized western music … and the other a mixed-breed canine.
How dare I compare these two? First of all, I love them both. Beethoven is not my favorite composer but he’s definitely in my top ten. His music will be blaring from the radio today, and I will be listening. Copper, though gone almost three years, will always be precious, a dog who filled our lives with joy.
But there are similarities beyond these. Beethoven’s music is powerful; it shakes its fist at fate. Copper was powerful, too. A dog who didn’t know how to stop barking or begging or running away. Isolate the traits that made these similarities possible and I see a mutt of unrealized greatness.
By all reports Beethoven was cantankerous. Copper was, too. While we celebrate Beethoven’s birthday on December 16, we only surmise he was born on this day in 1770 based on his baptismal record. Neither do we know Copper’s date of birth. We celebrated it on the day we acquired him, 12/16/2006.
Beethoven blazed new trails in music, moving us from the Classic into the Romantic period. Copper blazed new trails in the woods. And then there’s the most notable similarity: both Beethoven and Copper went deaf in later years.
Copper did not leave behind some of the most sublime music ever composed. But he did leave memories. I’ll be savoring those today.
I heard the bells as soon as we stepped out of the car. They confirmed that we had not, in fact, parked too far away, that the National Cathedral was close enough to walk to and be in our seats by 2 p.m. It had been an interesting trip in from the ‘burbs. One wrong turn meant we entered the city not the way I had planned, across the low-key Chain Bridge, but through the city, weaving through Rock Creek Park, trying to decode strange GPS directives.
But miraculously we arrived with 30 minutes to spare, and we spent 15 of them walking through the chill toward the cathedral, pulled by the bells and carillon, by the holiday tunes it played, by the ancient call to worship and to sing.
Once inside I reveled in the warmth and the bustle. It was a near-capacity audience in the massive church. A brass ensemble played as we took our seats, then a hush came over the crowd as the lights dimmed and the candlelight procession began. “Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!” Thousands of voices lifted together in song.
Right before the concert began a young couple sat down in front of us with their baby, an adorable little boy with chubby cheeks and curly hair. I’ll admit I was apprehensive. Would he fuss? Would he distract me with his cuteness?
Neither happened. Instead, he looked up at the vaulted ceiling, at the rose window, and pointed his little index finger up to heaven. He did it over and over again, reminding us all to look, to wonder, to be amazed. My eyes filled at his gesture, at the music, at the fact that I was here in this sacred space, welcoming the season with joy and song.
Yesterday I found myself in a place time forgot, a real, old-fashioned toy store. I’d heard about this place for years but had never visited it. With many kiddos on my list these days, it seemed like a place I should visit. And I was right.
I knew from the minute I walked in that I had found my happy place — or at least my happy shopping place, non-shopper that I am. Here were dolls and dress-up clothes and scads of Legos and Duplos. Here were books and science kits and adorable stuffed animals. Here were toys of my youth, like paddle balls and those little gizmos with magnetic filings that you can use to give a man a beard or a ’60s do.
It’s all part of my “make shopping fun” campaign, at which I’ve only been partly successful. After I left the toy store I spent some time wandering in the wilderness that is Tysons. But even there, buoyed by my earlier shopping experience, I could right myself and make good choices.
Most of all, I’m glad to know toy stores like this still exist, that they haven’t all vanished. Because children are what Christmas is about.
