Let Up for the Nativity

A light dusting of suspect, grey snow outside.  Christmas was already here when I went to bed at two-thirty.   I’m up.  Sharp regrets at having told people to be here at this hour.

The little one is blown away by how many presents have materialized over night and by the fact that the cookie left out on the mantel is gone.  We’ve had a number of “Is Santa real?” inquiries this year.  I reflect on how young I was when it became clear just how it was the magic happened.  I do not recall the epiphany, so much as my amazement that some other kid in fourth grade could still insist that Santa was real.  “He wrote the note in a green pen.  We don’t have any green pens!”  I can distinctly remember this assertion seeming utterly implausible.  “Louis, come on, you’re in fourth grade.  Your parents wrote it, man.”

The folks back home suggest that it will be over seventy degrees today.   Who needs to move from New York to LA with winters like that?  I’m tempted to brag about our dusting this morning, but it seems disingenuous.  Whatever fell last night is bituminous.  Business and must-do deals don’t let up for the nativity.  Skyping with someone in Ireland he sighs, digitally, proudly that it is cold and wet on Christmas day in Cork.  Well, at least Ireland remains consistent.

That coat didn’t fit.  What was I thinking, trying to fit him into an extra large.  I don’t know when I will ever where this tee shirt. "No I love it."  "The bag says Florence but I got it in Hong Kong."  It fits?  Are you sure?  You said you liked “galaxy” patterns.  That's a galaxy pattern, right?"

The potlatch races towards its inevitable exhaustion.  I make myself useful as a bagman, picking up the mounds of torn wrapping paper.  “Nope, these are all for your uncle." "I think we're done."  "Yes honey, we're done."  I take a bag of trash out and wheel in the new, white bike from the garage like the final scene in an opera.  Handels "Messiah" thunders out from the speakers in my study.