I sat in the car, waiting for the windscreen to clear. The condensation was on the inside, as it often is at this time of year, and I don’t like squeegeeing it from the driver’s seat. Like a slowly receding fog, it crept back across the glass. I was waiting to go home.
Out there, on the other side of the windscreen, the night itself was also foggy. It loomed between the balls of lamplight, suspended invisibly, above the fences and the gardens. The gothic mist swirled around them like a silent potion.
So it had been on Christmas Eve too, as I walked to the church for that midnight service - a sort of Victorian fog around the quiet village. That seems ages ago now, that midnight communion: the carols around the tree, the bishop in his gold-edged robes and the choir in their festive blue. It was lovely, though tough to keep a straight face in, when one of the readers asked God to ‘eliminate our hearts with the light of [his] presence’...
My heart was intact of course (thank you God for not answering every prayer) and full of both life and hope on Christmas Day. We exchanged presents in the time-honoured tradition. For those of you wondering, this year was a hit when it came to my Dad’s gift. I got him a waterproof radio, which he said was ‘excellent’... so there’s that. Then we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and I had a little chuckle to myself when the Nazis got their hearts literally eliminated by the presence of God bursting out of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the movie.
We spent the rest of the day with my Aunty and Uncle and my cousin, eating food and doing the latest ‘quiz-about-the-town-we-all-live-in’ which had been a present for one of us. Turns out I don’t know very much about where I live at all, especially not how many locks there are in the borough, which roads are listed ‘historically important’ because of the brickwork, nor where the first ‘Little Chef’ opened in 1958. I’m not too bothered.
We got back late, my Dad munched through his bag of pina colada popcorn (“How does it taste of cheese?”) and I went to bed feeling content. Which I think is just as well for a Christmas Day.
Boxing Day of course, is a different story. We piled round to my sister’s house, where my nephews jumped about in their pyjamas, clutching their new iPhones. I got shot with nerf pellets before I’d fully taken my coat off. One Nibling seems to have a sort of plastic, semi-automatic affair that rapid-fires the things, faster than you can say ‘no sugar thanks, just milk’ towards the kitchen, and wonder once again how your own sister can keep forgetting it. Oh well.
Somehow my Dad managed to sleep through it all - even the controversial moon-landings-discussion (yearly, unresolved, and many still unpersuaded) didn’t rouse him to discussion! He did ask the conspiracy sister whether or not she was considering writing yet another book. After last year, when she told us we might all be covertly investigated by the CIA, I was keen not to know anything at all about it.
The rest of Boxing Day was quiet. We watched The Snowman, and played a geography game in the evening. I was disconcerted by the fact that the little boy is supposed to be David Bowie. 34 years we’ve been watching that; it changes everything.
It’s been an okay sort of Christmas. I feel as though we’ve done all the usual things, said all the traditional things we do without realising, and we’ve reached the other side of it, where Betwixtmas begins and the New Year looms.
I do have a sort of sadness though, and I can’t quite explain it.
I certainly couldn’t work it out while sitting in the drive, watching the mist clear from the windscreen. I didn’t want to stay, but neither did I want to go home. I was peopled-out, but also very afraid of the lonely click of my front door and the dark, empty stairs behind it. The sadness lingered like the fog: I was ready to go, but not quite ready to arrive - perhaps the deeper story of my life! I was lost, somehow between the points of a journey.
The real magic of the season isn’t trying to recapture the sparkly, warm feeling of Christmas long ago. It isn’t even feeling tingly about the family, food, chocolate, wine, and gifts of next year either, I suppose, although those things are certainly part of it. The gold-edged Bishop was right: it’s about finding a joy in the journey - a theme that gets so missed in the snapshot nativity. Everything moves, everything changes, all those characters faced turmoil, whether fleeing like refugees to a new country, or returning home against the wishes of a murderous king. Yet the presence of God is there to light the way, every turmoil, every sadness, every step.
I flicked on the headlights and pulled out of the drive, into the fog.
Illuminate my heart, I prayed silently. I really meant it.
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