Christmas and Cold Nights and the Missing

And they were sore afraid

The radiators get so hot in the book shop these days that I can only lean against them for a brief time, so hot that when the outside of my synthetic coat rests against the heavy iron, the coat gets tacky and threatens to melt. People come in with flushed faces, coats pulled tight, wiggling their shoulders to shrug off the cold. They look shocked, as if they thought they’d never feel warm again. Cars stream by on Prince Street and it’s not like the summer, when I can hear their music blaring or talk radio talking endlessly or see their cigarette smoke curling from the window like a signal saying I’m wondering about life or I need help or Where am I? Loneliness is cold.

I ran up the street yesterday to get a few hand pies at Lancaster Pie and Coffee and I got two of their triple berry varieties and when the barista put them in the paper bag he looked at me with a grin and said, Now, the triple berry is in there with the triple berry so they’ll be tough to tell apart, and at first I didn’t get it. He had a gleam in his eye, though, so then I laughed and he laughed and I went back out into the cold, amazed at how funny we can find ourselves, at such simple things. How simple it can be to smile.

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This is winter, the season of buying buying buying and we’re here selling selling selling so that every so often I can hear Linus in the back of my mind, in response to Charlie Brown crying out,

“I guess I don’t really know what Christmas is all about. Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

What is Christmas all about? It’s easy to get swept up in it all, the numbers and the Black Friday shopping and the sales and the need to sell to keep this crazy little shop afloat. More and more and more.

And so Linus tells us all.

“Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.”

“Lights, please.”

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:
and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the
heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men.

“That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”

And then I remember that what we’re offering here isn’t just another plastic tree or widget or electronic doohicky that will be in a landfill three weeks from now. These are stories. Not only paper and ink bound up, but imagination and creativity and beauty. Tales that change us, change the way we think, change the way we live. Words that make us cry or laugh or wonder.

And they were sore afraid.

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So how do you balance tidings of great joy with the loss of someone dear? If that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown, then how do you live Christmas with an aching, gaping hole in your family’s life?

I can see the emptiness in Maile’s eyes, how she’s close to tears when we watch the Ohio State-Michigan game or make green bean casserole or sit in his armchair in our basement, where he spent six of the hardest months of his life recovering from a surgery where the doctor had tried to cut all the cancer from his gut. They got everything they could see, but there’s always the unseen.

I remember one of my first Christmases with Maile at her parents’ house in Ohio, on Gateshead Road, the most middle America of all middle American towns. Squared off blocks and every house with Christmas lights. I remember how her dad would sit on the floor, criss-cross-applesauce, and how he would sway front and back front and back front and back. Legally blind, he smiled and exclaimed over every gift and was the official trash remover, collecting the unwrapped wrapping paper and putting it straight into the blazing fireplace. He grew up in Hawaii. He always wanted to be warm.

I remember his teriyaki, marvelously brown, and his char siu pork, spectacularly pink, on white rice, and how he made these delicacies ahead of time whenever he knew we were coming home.

I had heard stories about him from earlier years, the times before I knew him, hard times were lived, tough choices were made, but they never matched up with the Jim I knew: gregarious and interested in my writing and passionate. The Jim who made us food and sat by the fire and acted like every gift of socks, every Home Depot gift card, was better than gold for the Christ child.

Merry Christmas?

And they were sore afraid.

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This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherd’s guard and angels sing
Haste, haste to bring him laud
The Babe, the son of Mary

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Haste. Haste.

There’s a mini-Christmas tree in our shop made of used books, laid open on their faces, spines facing straight up so that they create a v, each on top of each. The spines are definitely broken now.

A tree of brokenness, wrapped in mini-twinkle lights.

Haste.

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I close the shop on a Friday evening during shopping season and walk out the front door, out into the cold and a wind that sweeps down Prince alongside the traffic, a cold that makes me catch my breath. Above, no stars, just the lights from the parking garage. Across the way, a homeless man—at least I think it’s a homeless man but all I can see is a man-sized lump of blankets and sleeping bags on cardboard spread out to cover the cold sidewalk.

I wait for the traffic to clear.

I cross the street.

Haste. Haste.

And they were sore afraid.

Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?