This is the best thing I've ever written. I'll never be able to equal it, nor surpass it - not in this life; and presumably I won't be blogging in the next....

Onward!

I couldn't sleep last night, so many things on my mind and I couldn't shut it off.

I had a moment of panic when I realized it was Christmas Eve and I hadn't bestowed a single thought on a certain jolly old elf. I remembered that years after I learned the truth about Santa, I STILL used to go the window late at night on Christmas Eve, staring up at the moon and hoping to see the silhouette of a sleigh, or listening for the sound of bells....

But not last night. After five decades of life on this planet, something had shifted, some internal clock, perhaps, that said "Time to put away childish things.", and the fat man with the red suit had gotten lost in holiday traffic and rampant commercialism and "Whose season is it, anyway?".

And yet....

I'm a cynic. (Five decades of dealing with human beings will do that to you.) I'm no longer surprised when I hear of another serial murderer, another war waged in the name of the Prince of Peace, another corporation pouring poison into the sky for the sake of a bigger bottom line, another species hounded to extinction in the name of the great god Profit.

And yet....

There are times, still, when people surprise me. But in the spirit of the season, let's let Mr. Dickens say it for me, from the pages of A Christmas Carol:
 
"...the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Indeed.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Remember the tremendous outpouring of assistance from so many people, people who in many cases were in straitened financial circumstances themselves? Forget the waste, forget the mismanagement. Focus only on the fact that people - ordinary, everyday, people - "seem[ed] by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely" and gave - not from their abundance, but from their hearts.

Call him who you will - Kris Kringle, St. Nicholas, the Holly King, Father Christmas, or the beloved, familiar Santa Claus - so long as love and generosity and the spirit of giving exist in the human heart, so long will Santa Claus live and endure, even in the hearts of the most cynical.

Thanks, Santa.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

* The author wishes to acknowledge the direct inspiration of Francis Pharcellus Church, writer of the famous editorial "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus".

‘Twas the longest night in the calendar of the year, and I dreamed…

I dreamed that an angel came to my bedside and bade me awaken. Not a chubby cherubim, but the tall, terrifying seraphim with a flaming sword who are supposed by some to guard the way to the Tree of Life in the original Eden (though this one bore no weapon of any kind). Tall, powerfully built, with the traditional wings, in a robe the hue of old gold, but much faded, as though from long exposure to a light more intense than that of the sun. This apparition had no face, no hands, no exposed skin at all, just pure white light. There was a suggestion – barely -- of something behind the light, but although the light was not painful to look at, my eyes could not pierce beyond it.

Rise, and walk with me. The voice was quiet, as if the being spoke from a distance, rather than ten inches from my face.

By now I had had leisure enough to realize that this was a dream, and that the words just spoken were a direct quote from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – culled, no doubt, from my subconscious while I slept. I remembered also that I didn’t believe in angels. Strange, I thought, the hodgepodge that the subconscious cobbles into dreams. Then I rolled over and closed my eyes again.

Feeling chilly, I reached for the comforter and, not finding it, cautiously cracked open one eye – to find that I was floating a good two feet above the bed! The angel stood there still, the sleeves of the robe extended as though he held his hands out, palms up.

The tone was mild enough, but there was beneath it a rumble of contained power that made me think that it would be as well not to ignore it, if it were only a dream. I turned to the side and addressed the angel.

“Look, I’ve seen A Christmas Carol a hundred times, and read the book even more than that. You’ve got the wrong house. For that matter, you’ve got the wrong theology. Go find Jimmy Stewart and harass him.”

The figure abruptly turned away from the bed, and I followed, borne up in its wake. It walked through the wall of the apartment (and I saw how little it took to meet TVA energy package standards) and we stood outside in the chill night air. Without a single wingbeat (indeed, it seemed as though the wings were there only for decorative purposes), we rose high into the night sky.

We didn’t do the Christmas Carol routine. No trip to my past (thank the gods!), no visions of the future culminating in my own lonely grave. Only the here and now.

We saw misery and poverty – some that was well deserved, some that only the gods could have prevented. We saw casual cruelty and neglect.

But in the midst of this, we saw hope. We saw people without Christmas gifts, without a Christmas tree, with barely clothes enough to cover them, with barely a roof over their heads, with barely enough food to survive from one day to the next. But they had each other, and in that they were rich. We saw those who cared little for Christmas fripperies, whose only concern was to make this time – any time – better for someone else. We saw people who gave up their own holiday to man a help line, or work in a homeless shelter, or mind another woman’s children so that the mother (who worked two jobs to make ends meet) could get a little uninterrupted sleep. We saw people who epitomized the spirit of giving better than any shopping-center Santa Claus, who gave not only from their plenty, but gave unstintingly of themselves. And always I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but each time I turned to look, it vanished from sight.

Then all this faded away, and we were in a snowy meadow, with an ice-clad forest just beyond, and in the midst of the woods, a mighty bonfire that roared treetop-high without consuming any manner of fuel. Around this fire were gathered all manner of people, and all manner of animals, and they all partook of warmth in the midst of the cold, and were contented.

And suddenly there was a man, eight feet tall if he was an inch, in a green robe the color of holly, with eyes as blue as a winter’s sky, with reddish-brown hair and beard and a smile that was brighter than the fire and a laugh that resounded like merry thunder through the forest. He looked me full in the eye, and bade me warm myself by the fire. I looked inquiringly at my guide, and he but nodded the light where his head should have been, and I could have sworn he smiled – though how I knew that, I know no more than you.

And as I stepped closer to the fire, I saw faces I recognized, and my sight grew misty.

There was a large silver tabby, who stopped chasing his tail to give me a familiar slitty-eyed smile; and a black cat with eyes the color of old gold and just the suggestion of a few white hairs under his chin, lithe and agile as a ferret, who purred when he saw me; another tiny black cat, like a black puffball, with green eyes that gazed steadily into mine; and a black and white tom who purred with vigor, and had stopped drooling for all time.

In all this you have done well, said the figure in green; but his voice was not within my ears.

“Lord,” I said with a trembling voice, for I knew well to whom I spoke, antlers or no. “Lord, I see many here, but one is missing.” And at that, the green man roared with laughter, long and lustily, and gestured to my side.

The light dimmed, and I saw a familiar and well-loved face, with fur the color of butterscotch pudding and green eyes – pupils now both the same size, and alight with intelligence. The robe and wings collapsed like the stage props they had been, and he lay in my arms once again, purring, eyes bright with love.

I give you a Yule gift to take back with you, said the Holly King, the knowledge that those you love are here, and waiting for you to join them when the time comes.

I looked again, and the Mother was there by his side, in a gown the blue-white of new-fallen snow, her hand raised as if bestowing a blessing. We will take care of them until you come, and her smile was warmer and brighter than the bonfire. I fell into her eyes…

…and awoke in my own bed, with my wife by my side, the dog at the foot in her accustomed place, the cats bright-eyed and curious beside us, and I knew that it had all really happened, and that the gift I had been given was greater than any Christmas gift I had ever received.

Merry Yule to all, and to all a good night.