Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Christmas Memories - Old and New

It’s been a whirlwind of preparation during this Christmas season — readying our hearts and homes for Christ to be born yet again in our lives. Every year brings different challenges, maybe additional burdens and, if we look for them, deeper joys. This Christmas we decided to talk about the crèche, the nativity sets we have in our homes, and we asked for your memories of Christmas. The response was overwhelming, and the stories filled with love. It was exciting to open the emails and letters with your memories.

This is a time of year to bring families together to celebrate Christ’s birth not only in Bethlehem but in each of our lives. It’s time to tell the family stories, to remember loved ones that touched our lives in special ways. Sometimes we remember with the decorations that we unwrap and place on a tree or a mantle or table. They not only evoke the memories of some special person in our lives but give us a chance to pass the memories along to the next generation.

In our family, my sister saves almost everything. I try, but I can’t seem to keep track of where I filed or stored or “saved” something. This year, she reminded me of an aunt who managed somehow to put up the same Christmas tree every year — not an artificial tree but a real tree. Every year the present tree was an identical twin to the last one. It was hard to believe and I made sure I touched the present tree to make sure it was real.

Also, on that tree she hung icicles — plastic replicas of course — but these were special: they were supposed to glow in the dark. She gave us one or two of the icicles to take home, and we crawled under a bed — thinking this would be the darkest place in the house — to see if what she said was true. Now, of course, I don’t remember if the icicles glowed, but I do remember slithering under the bed with my sister to see what would happen. I see those icicles hanging on my sister’s tree, and the memories of that Christmas long ago come to mind. I almost laugh at the memory of the two of us huddling under a bed waiting for the magic moment when icicles would glow in our hands.

This Christmas we will add to the memories we hold dear with gatherings around a table in homes and then gathering around the altar to celebrate the Incarnation, the birth of our Savior and most importantly, the Eucharist which binds us into one family, the Body of Christ. As members of the Body, we reach out not only to those we hold in our hearts but to other members of that Body who may be less fortunate in one way or another than we are. They may be alone without family or friends close by, or they may have lost someone they love in the past year and will be celebrating a different kind of Christmas. We need to open our arms and encircle them with the love of Christ and make them part of a Christmas memory. Blessings to all of you this Christmas.