I went to bed early on Tuesday night, and something woke me up at 11:30, and I didn’t feel like going back to sleep, so I grabbed my journal and my laptop and stayed up awhile.
I went for the internet first, I guess, because my journal entry is marked 12:28 a.m., and I drew a little tree with a star on top next to “Wednesday, December 24, Christmas Eve 2025.”
“We often put a star or an angel atop the Christmas tree, a reminder of ‘the’ Star that appeared above the place where Christ was born, or of the angels who appeared to herald his arrival,” I wrote.
“So many symbols of the season harken back to the Greatest Story Ever Told, but the meaning of the symbols is diluted in the midst of all the season’s distractions.”
Here I grabbed the Bible to read the beginning of Luke 2 again, just like my dad did for many years, sending our imaginations back to the times when dear old Governor Quirinius was in charge of things in that neck of the woods. My eyes wandered to Luke 1 and Luke 3, and I saw that I have forgotten much of what occurred before and after the Birth, including Simeon and Anna in the Temple and Elizabeth beforehand.
Luke records the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam, and I was tempted to count the number of generations that had passed before Jesus arrived, but it was well after midnight by now.
“Maybe this is how to contemplate the meaning of Christmas — in the quiet of night and early morning, with the dogs sleeping nearby and the laptop and phone set aside,” I wrote.
I hope you can find some minutes during the wild and wacky time that Christmas can be, to sit in the quiet and count your blessings and the miraculous changes that began on that day in Bethlehem a couple of millennia ago.
