On the first Christmas morning I remember

what stood out right away was the darkness. We were awake, my brother and I, but it was dark, but it wasn't night, so that was unusual. Could you call this morning? Was time still operative? It didn't seem operative. Obviously I couldn't have said so but this was a question I would have spent time on if I didn't have so many other questions forming so quickly

there in the living room with a fire in the fireplace but no parents,and the lit-up tree, which I must have seen,but not at this timeless dark time with no parents,and my brother who seemed to be my new parent because he knew things I didn't know and appeared to be in charge

(and thank god somebody was)

I was sitting at the low coffee table with my back to the fireinvestigating a giant red sock that said

Tina

on it

my NAME is on this SOCK this sock is talking to ME ? !

the (turns out it's called a) stocking had a doll in it that I'd never seen before and some kind of candy in a fancy box in another language that I'd never seen, maybe German, and a lot of small things that seemed fun that I didn't quite understand

Santa Claus,

I'd had some notion of him, a man we'd been talking about

This must have been him because nothing of this was anything I'd ever seen

a dazzling muchness against a mysterious darkness

what the hell?

What I'd like to give you most of all is a return not to childhood but to mystery with a streak of

what is holiness? what even is it? who knows? if you know, don't say it

and also scale, where you're very small against the large thing for awe

We're grown so we know so much. In our house Santa is gone this year. My youngest revealed that he's known for a couple of years. Also gone is Larraine, my mother-in-law, who was a living Fezziwig who came to be with us each year until she wasn't living any more. This Christmas has a danger of feeling plain if we face the wrong way, towards what isn't happening. but who knows how many we get, these Christmases?

this is a time for conjuring

On Christmas Eve night after you go to sleep you're going to wake up and find yourself outside by a cliff with a mass of other drowsy, blinking, silent people wrapped in their blankets Something is coming close, it seems, will be the general consensus And then a concert in the air where you won't know if it's voices or instruments and you don't know who's giving it because you can't see anybody Nothing looks like it's there But it is absolutely a concert Nobody wants it to stop and it doesn't, it just keeps going until you wake up in the next scene The next scene is you wake up being led through a tunnel that feels like it's under trees A hallway, and it's a gnome guiding you to the place, a round under-a-tree room with fireplaces all around  Banquet! lingonberries, etc. nobody you know but everyone is so happy to be there that everybody automatically knows each other perfectly well enough long tables and firelight and plenty of food eating and eating, warm, until you wake up in the next place this is also under a tree but private it's a room with a chair in it for you you know to sit in the chair to receive gifts someone is with you that you can't see, the most special one,you don't know who it isor you couldn't quite say itbut you know this one the besta sensation so crushingly wished-foryou can't look upsomeone who may as wellbe the rest of you  

heretofore invisible and,if you dared to look, not invisible now

 * and then you wake up in your regular worldsuch as it is in every respect, such as it is.

You can touch all of it.

Everything that's still here is still here, and something more is coming.