Hey, Wendy:

My grandson on Ruth's side of our family was born on December 26th, so we always have a birthday cake for him. Having a birtdhay cake for Jesus sounds like a great idea, too.

Here's one of my most unlikely memorable Christmases.

It was my first Christmas after my divorce. My ex-wife and I were alternating having the boys on Holidays, and she had them Christmas Eve. My divorce had been a real shredder: two years of investigation before awarding me sole chustody of the boys. That is still rare, to give sole custody to the father, but it was a reflection on my ex-wife's lack of emotional state. My sons were just 8 and 14 at the time, and life was still very hard for us.

Christmas Eve looked like it was going to be very lonely. I decided to go over to a neighboring town where they were having public caroling around the Christmas tree in the center of the green. It was a beautiful moonlit night with heavy fallen snow blanketing the fields and woods. When I arrived at the green, no one was there. I'd heard about the caroling from a woman I had hoped to accidently run into on the green as I knew that she and her friends were planning to be there. When I arrived to an empty downtown and green, I decided to stop at my woman friend's apartment to tell her the caroling had apparently been cancelled. It was a lame excuse for stopping by, but it was the best that I could come up with on such short notice.

When I arrived at her apartment and rang her door bell, she answered the door amidst a lot of noise in the background. She and her women friends had already been to the caroling (I got the time wrong,) and were drinking some Holiday cheer. I felt like I was intruding on someone else's party. I was. My friend offered me a drink, and I stood there uncomfortably, chuggalugging it down and excused myself as quickly as possible so that they could resume their merriment.

Sound like a wonderful Christmas Eve yet?

Driving home alone at Christmas Eve for the first time in my life,
I didn't feel alone, or lonely. The sky was brilliantly lit by a full moon, and the air was so clear that I felt like I was in space, not in Connecticut. There was a silence that deeply moved me. "Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright." I felt the holiness of the night in a way I never have. And I sang, "Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant."

And I felt very joyful, and triumphant.

Jerry