A Diary, Four Candles and a Savior

My memories of childhood Christmases blur together. Each year was much the same: the whole family trimming the tree, my brother and I decorating Christmas cookies, and all of us going downtown to have lunch at Higbee’s Silver Grille, where each child’s meal came inside a cardboard stove. Like most middle-class American children, my Christmas memories are littered with the gifts I received. Most are long forgotten, except for one.

It was Christmas morning of 1971. I was 10 years old and while unwrapping a plethora of stocking gifts, I noticed a rectangular package. I reached for it and as I flung aside the wrapping paper, my eyes got wide and I gasped. It was a diary with a lock and a teeny tiny key! I looked in awe at this miracle and wondered, how did my parents know that this was my heart’s desire? Except that I didn’t even know it was my heart’s desire until I saw it. This was a gift of such magnificence that I never could have dreamed of asking for it.

How Did They Know?

I finally had a place to write my secret thoughts and longings. I could finally write about my love for David Cassidy, the teen heartthrob from the TV sitcom The Partridge Family. I could finally put down, in ink, that I longed for David Cassidy to be my big brother. And in the back of my mind, I kept wondering how my parents knew that I not only wanted a diary, but that I needed a diary.

Advent memories are a lot like Christmas memories to me; they all blur together. Every year, it is the same. We decorate the church with garlands, a Christmas tree, and candles in the windows. We prominently display the creche–except the ceramic baby Jesus, who won’t be reverently placed in the manger until Christmas Eve–on the altar. We put the imposing advent candle stand in the front of the church with three purple and one pink candle, ready to be lit one by one each Sunday in Advent.

Every year is the same, with a different family each week asked to light the advent candles and it’s always the least shy member of the family walking with determination up to the microphone to say the prayer. And each year it is the same, with the congregation holding their collective breath until the candle wick catches fire. Of course, this is especially nerve-wracking when a child is doing the lighting. But each year, we blunder through until Christmas Eve arrives and every Advent candle is lit, and we can finally place the ceramic baby Jesus in the tiny wooden manger of the beautiful creche. After four weeks of lighting candles and singing different verses of O Come O Come Emmanuel, baby Jesus has arrived.

Every Year the Same

And every Christmas Eve, it is the same. We attend church and hear the Christmas story. The shepherds still watch their flock by night, and the angels continue to praise God with everything they’ve got. There are still no vacancies at the inn, so every year this teenage mother-to-be must give birth to our Savior in a barn.

The Christmas Eve worship service always ends with the congregation singing Silent Night in a darkened sanctuary, holding candles and again holding our collective breath, this time hoping no one will drop a candle and set the church on fire. After the last verse is sung, all the candles are extinguished, and the congregation heaves a collective sigh of relief, we proceed quietly out to the cloakroom to put on our winter coats, and whisper “Merry Christmas” to one another in hushed voices.

How Did God Know?

We leave the Christmas Eve service in a state of awe at this miracle birth and ask ourselves, “How did God know?” How did God know that we needed a Savior who would grow into a man who would love us so completely and show us such forgiveness that it included the whole world? We were waiting for a Savior that would take an eye for an eye. We were not expecting a Savior who showed compassion and turned the other cheek. We were definitely not expecting a Savior who asked us to do the same.

And year after year, it is the same. Our eyes get wide and we gasp at our Savior’s birth, knowing that we not only want this Savior but that we need this Savior. And we realize that this is a gift of such magnificence that not one of us in two thousand years could have imagined such a Savior. And each Christmas Eve, as the ceramic Christ child is placed in the tiny wooden manger, we shake our heads in wonder, and ask ourselves, “How did God know?”

For Reflection (either individually or with a group)

Read the blog. Read it a second time, maybe reading it aloud or asking someone else to read it aloud so you can hear it with different intonation and emphases. Invite the Divine to open your heart to allow the light of new understanding to pierce the shadows of embedded assumptions, stereotypes, and ways of thinking so that you may live more abundantly.

• Do you remember a time when you got exactly the gift you wanted, even if you didn’t know immediately that you wanted it?
• What did the gift mean to you? What makes that memory so special?
• What do you find so special about the divine gift of Jesus to humanity?

Download a pdf including the Reflection Questions to share and discuss with friends, family, or members of your faith community small group.