I Believe in Christmas Magic

There is magic in Christmas, and I believe in it.

The root of where my belief comes from is our family’s lore, originating from a time just preceding my birth. As the story goes, my parents were having a hard time conceiving. At the time they were new immigrants to this country, living in Chicago, I think.

They didn’t have much support or know many people. I can only assume they had little money. As I recall, my father insisted upon my mother learning English. And so she went, taking the bus in the dead of winter, to a Catholic Church that offered English classes to new Americans.

And if you know Chicago, it’s damn cold in the winter. And yet, despite my mother’s protest, my father sent her off trudging through the frigid city to learn to speak the language of this country.

At some time during that season of their life, my mother prayed. Prayed in the broadest sense, I suppose, but really she was making a deal. She promised, to whom I don’t know, that if she was blessed with a child she would put up a Christmas tree, every year.

I am obviously here now, and sure enough, every year a Christmas tree goes up in our Hindu household, for reasons bigger than the commercial and assimilating to avoid conflict. On the contrary, we have not assimilated into Christmas, we have assimilated Christmas into us.

Christmas trees are a durable tradition for Robyn and her immediate family, too. Every year on Thanksgiving she trims the family tree while her mother cooks dinner and the rest of the crew heads to the stadium to watch the Detroit Lions football team, almost invariably, lose the Thanksgiving Day game.

In our own home, we have created our traditions with each other and our children. We trim the tree right around Thanksgiving and start a solid month of listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies, always starting first with White Christmas. We eagerly await the first weekend snow, and like clockwork we watch The Polar Express and drink hot cocoa. We unpack and read classic books out of the seasonal box, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas which Robyn’s father reads to the family on Christmas Eve, after we all go to church, eat a family dinner, and do a secret sibling gift exchange.

But of all these traditions, and others I haven’t described in detail, the Christmas tree is still the most mystic and alluring. It’s where the magic of Christmas has always resided, at least for me.

After we put up all our ornaments and trimmings and lights, I find myself, every year, sitting on the wooden floor of our family room, carefully studying the tree. This year, I had our sons beside me, for a fleeting moment at least, looking up. It is our family yearbook up there.

Every ornament has a story, a purpose. There are ornaments from Robyn and my’s childhood, representing our experiences and interests growing up. Then there are the ones that represent significant moments in our life together - like our first Christmas together, our first home, or the metallic gold guitar ornament we bought in Nashville which commemorates our honeymoon. 

There are ornaments demarcating when our family has grown, dated with the births of each of our children. There are the ornaments we have from our family trips, most recently a wooden one we luckily found in the gift shop on our way out of North Cascades National Park.

Our Christmas Tree is our life story, our histories intertwined with the branches and lights. It is the only time machine I know of that actually works - drawing me into memories and stories of a different time and place. More than that, it’s a window to the future, leaving me feeling wonder and hope for the possibilities of the coming year. When I am there, at the foot of the tree, sitting at the edge of the red tree skirt, I am all across the universe.

This to me, is magic.

As I am sitting here writing this, it is the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2021. The first weekend snow fell last night. We are in our family room, watching The Polar Express. Robyn and the kids brewed some hot chocolate, right on cue with the appropriate scene in the film. I see them all on the couch, snuggling a few feet over from me. Our family Christmas tree is immediately behind me, the reflection of it’s lights glowing softly on my iPad screen. 

I see the snow covered branches, wet and heavy, out our study room window. The neighborhood is quiet and our radiators are toasty warm, as if we were able to set them at “cozy” instead of a specific temperature.

As I sit here, trying my hardest to soak up this moment, I know that much of the stories we share at Christmas, like Santa Clause’s sleigh and reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and any assortment of Christmas “miracles” reported on the local news probably are not true, strictly speaking. I cannot verify them or explain them enough with empirical facts to know they are true. And I will never be able to.

But I still believe in the magic. Because of the tree, and what happens nearby.

Our tree, and what it represents, is a special relic in our family. As we put it up, year after year, it reminds me that our history is worth remembering and that our future is something to be hopeful about. Our tree, and what it represents, renews my belief that there is magic in Christmas.

A little, gracious, reminder that life is worth the trouble of eventual death

We are celebrating Bo’s birthday with family tonight, which makes it a special day. I am in our dining room, on a Friday, but I am working from home. Robyn and I are having lunch. Bo is napping, which he especially needs today because he has a tough cold.

Like she had done for our son’s first birthday the year prior, Robyn has affixed some simple decorations. It may even be fair to call them spartan. There is a single “Happy Birthday” hanging banner, recycled from when Robyn’s colleagues decorated her desk. The rest of the decor are only pictures.

They are of the past year. They are individually placed in the panes of our driveway window and the french doors from dining room to foyer. There are some more photos in the doorway to the kitchen and some on our marble fireplace mantle. They are scotched taped, simply, gently. Robyn is as economical as she is thoughtful.

Bo is in all the photos, some are by himself and some are with others. These are pictures of special occasions, yes, but many are just every day life. A snuggle with Riley. Playing in the snow. Christmas day. Afternoons with grandparents. Family vacations. Walks along the river. A first haircut. Football tailgates where we rolled down a golf course hill.

Come to think of it, I misspoke earlier. Not all these photos are holidays or of particularly notable moments, but they are all special occasions.

Looking at these photos I feel many things simultaneously, but mostly two things. I feel love in my whole body, and I feel the passing of time.

These photos are befuddling because they remind me that with each year, with each birthday, my death grows nearer. Eventually Bo will have a birthday where I’m not here, in the flesh. But I still feel an unqualified joy…the purest happiness. Why? I don’t understand.

A moment passes. I take a breath. And I realize why I feel so happy in this moment where death feels especially identified. As much as I feel time passing - sitting here in this one room, in this one house, on this one street, in this one city on this pale blue dot, here in this moment - I realize. Looking at these photos…the opportunity for these photos, it is more than worth dying for. And this makes me feel love in my whole body.

And then I take another breath, deeper this time, and Robyn and I finish our lunch. And more time passes.