NEWS

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The churches I attended growing up did not celebrate the twelve days of Christmas. We put up our tree on Christmas Eve, and took it down on New Year's Eve. I learned about the European - and especially the English - Christmastide celebrations mostly from reading Victorian novels. Twelve days of drinking (wassailing) and feasting probably sounded like way too much carrying on for my Calvinist teetotalling grandmother.  About the only custom from that era that my family observed was that our Christmas stockings were not filled with toys, but with oranges, apples, and nuts – popular Christmastide treats in Victorian England.

Christian tradition holds that Christmastide, the twelve days of Christmas, spans the time from the birth of the Christ child to the arrival of the three Magi from the East, an event that early Christians believed signified the revelation of the Messiah to the Gentile world. The Magi’s arrival date, January 6, came to be known as the Epiphany. January 5, the Eve of the Epiphany, is Twelfth Night, the last night of carousing and feasting. And though I didn’t grow up celebrating it, Twelfth Night has become very special to me because in 1960 my first child, a son, was born that night.

At that time doctors could not give a specific date to expect the birth of the child, only a range. So we were told to be prepared any time during Christmas and New Year's. The days and weeks leading up to Christmas week were as busy and hectic as ever. On Christmas Eve we were still waiting for him/her (no gender reveal back then), so at 11 p.m., we dressed warmly and drove in the cold darkness the one block to our church for the midnight candlelight service. The service was mostly familiar carols, meditations, and prayers. And I meditated. I remember sitting in the pew, breathing deeply and letting the stillness of that holy night settle into my body and my soul.

My mind kept going to the teenaged mother-to-be, and I wondered if she had some of the same thoughts I was having. What was it going to be like to bring a real, live, whole human being into the world? Was she frightened? In awe? I was. Did she feel her baby’s little feet kicking against her ribs, proving he was really there, as I felt mine? Did she worry she wouldn’t know how to be a mother? How to hold her babe, how to feed him, how to bathe him, how to protect him? I remembered that my aunts thought my sister Jane was a “natural mom,” but wondered aloud, “I just can’t imagine Emmie as a mother.” I couldn’t either.

As the service was ending, we sang "Silent Night" and each lit our candles as the sanctuary lights were slowly extinguished.  At midnight, the bells in the church steeple rang out twelve times, and we all walked out into the cold darkness, holding our candles high to light our way.

Over the next twelve days I meditated a lot and I carried on a one-sided conversation with the teenaged mother of the baby boy. I don’t claim that I heard her say anything, but I gained a sense that everything would be okay. All is calm, all is bright.

Four years later, by the summer of 1964, I had brought three boys into the world. (Our girl came later.) My husband and I went to the New York World’s Fair, where we learned that the Vatican had loaned to the fair the magnificent Pieta by Michaelangelo – not a copy, the real thing.  I had to see it, and it pierced my heart with its beauty and its pathos. The marble seemed to glow as if it was lit from within. The teenaged girl had become a mature young woman. Spread across her lap and cradled in her arms was the mutilated body of her son, the baby boy she clearly loved so much. Though her face was serene, the unspeakable agony she was feeling was something I could sense. I wept. (“Mary, did you know…?”)

On that Twelfth Night, I assumed the new role of mother, a role that you do not just take off when the children become adults, like an actor removing a costume before the play is over. I do not mean to compare my life with that of the teenaged mother, but somehow I feel she knows that I have made many trips to the ER and stood by the bed of each of my children, not knowing if they would last the night. (They all did.) Miracles.

Through the generations my family has continued the practice of gathering together for a meal sometime during the holidays. This year we gathered on December 26, the second day of Christmas, for a joyous, raucous, poignant, blessed time together. We 19 of our clan of 30 hugged, laughed, cried, shared memories of times past, and talked about when and how we will get together next year. The star of the show was my little, not-quite-two-year-old great-granddaughter. As I held her, I marveled at her perfect little fingers and fingernails, and those deep blue eyes that she fixed on mine. I kissed the tender, vulnerable spot on the back of her neck. A living miracle. I’m sure the teenaged mother did the same to her dear son.

We stood there together, the four generations, my great-granddaughter, my granddaughter, my son, and I, our lives stretching over the decades, a testament to the Creator’s lavish generosity.  And I learned that by this time next year, there will be another little one, and the two-year-old will move up to the role of big sister. Another miracle. Rejoice!