A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION

Several events in my past have made indelible to my understanding that Christmas is indeed all enthusiasts say it is and more. It is indeed “the most wonderful time of the year,” just as the song says. And I'm not thinking only of the commercialism the ad men drum up, but of times in my life I look back on with an almost holy solemnity; times that proved to me at least that the birth of Jesus may be of all birthdays the one most worthy of celebration.

I remember a Christmas party a bunch of SSS faculty friends and their wives had at our place back in the early 80's. It was a “help the host” BYOB and a snack (my invention) type party to keep any of our wives from having a lot of heavy preparation. They were usually on a Friday nite and often at the drop of a hat. At this particular prey-Christmas party there was much animated sharing, intemperate drinking, some political haggling, and even some nut doing Shakespearean soliloquies. At most such parties, most of the guests began to totter and trickle out for home by around 1:00, but this particular night there was one who totally lost track of the time, and we finally got rid of him at around 2:00. Or so we thought, but then the doorbell rang and Joe McCurnin, always the last to leave, poked his head in the door, “Gene, you gotta come out and see this.”

Well, why not? I threw on a coat and Joe led me out into the street. “Listen,” he said. “What is it?”I said. “Nothing, listen,” he whispered. And then I got it. It was an absolutely silent night. Huge fluffy snow flakes wafted down like moths around the street light. We both just stood there spell-bound by a silence so profound you found yourself whispering so as not to destroy the solemnity of the moment. Finally Joe said, “I thought you'd dig this, being a poetry guy and all.” And he was right. It was one of those times when one just knew something holy was close by. We both stood there in silence for a long time, then silently went our separate ways.

That night brought to my recollection another night with a similar holiness hanging over it. It was a Christmas Eve, and all of the Pinkney kids had pieces to say or parts to play in the Christmas program at the Fairmount Methodist Church. I was always a wise man, usually bearing gold, and brother Charles was usually a shepherd. After the program, walking home through the snow-swaddled silent streets with “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie” playing in my mind, I felt for the first time that sacred, almost tangible silence as”In thy dark and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.

Something somewhat like that atmosphere is described in “Hamlet,” by one of the guards of the castle just after the ghost leaves at the crowing of the cock:

“Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

And then they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike

No fairy takes nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.”

Other times when the presence of the Holy Spirit could be sensed by me include one candle light service at Bethel Lutheran Church and a Concordia Choir's Christmas concert. Those can often be awesome. Nor can I omit the numerous Christmas Eve services we used to attend at the south side Assembly of God Church, just singing traditional carols,or hearing the age-old nativity story read well from the book of Luke, or just doing praise and worship. Sometimes the Presence of the Lord was so weighty, one had to sit down to keep from falling, “so hallow'd and so gracious were those times.”

These days of political division, rumors of war, anarchic violence, and social unrest, we need more than ever to “gather together to seek the Lord's blessing,” and the Grace that can make Christmas a time of healing, restoration, love, acceptance and forgiveness; a time “that crowns America's good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” “For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” And, says Jesus, “Where two or more are gathered together in my name, there I AM in the midst of them.”

Go in confident expectation of good, which is hope. “God is not a man that He should lie.”

Gene Pinkney - 12/ 23/ 19 - For the Daily News