BY Karen Stiller
I ENTERED the buffet restaurant in a Cuban resort on December 25, 2023, and stumbled, almost literally, upon a circle of tourists watching Mary give birth on the floor in front of the salad bar.
I fumbled for my phone to try to record the moment as angel Gabriel knelt, reached up into Mary’s dress and pulled out baby doll Jesus. We tourists – Russians and Canadians who by this point in the week viewed each other mostly as competition for eggs and the pasta bar – shared rare smiles and tender glances. A security guard watched from the side, a perplexed look on his face.
I felt a rush of love for sweet Mary, for beachy, bare-chested Gabriel who, after handing Jesus to his mother struck a worshipful pose, arms extended heavenward to the buffet ceiling; and for Joseph with his straw hat and shimmery gold tunic, who held Mary up as she reclined, weary in his arms.
“No one else goes this far,” I wanted to tell the dedicated actors. “But good for you!”
Jesus was being born in Bethlehem, in Ottawa, in Moscow and Memphis, and at our feet at the Cuban buffet, like he is every year, everywhere.
And I couldn’t get away from him, even when I tried. I have fled Canada with my children the last two Christmases. Like the fanciest, most privileged holiday refugees in the world, we packed our bags and headed to beaches to avoid parties, gifts, decorations, eggnog, gingerbread, obligation, church services, most definitely the singing of Silent Night, and whatever parts of our sorrow we could steer around by leaving.
My husband Brent was an Anglican priest who died in January of 2023. As a clergy household, every part of Christmas ran by the parish clock, from when our kids could open their stockings to the requirement that family come to us for the holidays, instead of us ever going to them.
It’s just the way it was, until it would never be that way again. We had to do something different to survive the deep well of memory and longing and the forced cheer of Christmas. For two years, it mostly worked.
This year we are staying in the snow. I lugged our artificial tree up from the basement. In a corner of our living room, I set up the cardboard life-sized Chevy Chase cut-out from Christmas Vacation I found at a flea market the first December Brent was gone.
“You can tell Dad’s not here,” one kid said. Yup.
I’m attending the Christmas concerts of grown adult friends who have gamely joined community choirs. I’m cheering them on and thinking how tickled Brent would be.
We’re hosting a little party, like we used to. Maybe we will sing some carols, like before. We will go to a tiny Anglican church in Buckhorn on Christmas Eve, so long as the roads are clear near our cottage where we are hiding out this year.
One of us will read the Christmas story out loud. My son will wander off. We will watch sentimental movies. My mother will be on her iPad. We will hope for snow. But not too much. We will eat layered nacho dip and drink a beer or two. We will try to learn a new board game. Then, we will pull out an old favourite instead.
It will be Christmas.
My gift-giving list has changed. It used to be long and elaborate. Now it is short and simple. So is the list of the gifts that Christmas brings. God is with us. Short and simple. When Jesus is born this year in all the places for all the people, this one thing we can know for sure: He came on purpose. He is with us in the gunk and the goo and the garbage and the grief and the glory.
We can begin again each Christmas. We can reach out for hope. We can choose to try. Dear Jesus. Hello. Hello. Hello again. TAP
Karen Stiller is author of Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life and The Minister›s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness and More, and co-author of Craft, Cost & Call: How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer. She lives in Ottawa.
The first Christmas was a night of long journeys, closed doors, and unexpected visitors smelling of woodsmoke and sheep.
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