Advent Day 3: Christmas Homecoming...

I have to admit that today I found it difficult to write. There are myriad reasons as to why. I find I have a bit of the Christmas Blues right now. My daughter is going to be with her mom in Tennessee this year. She almost never misses Christmas with me and my side of the family. She loves the traditions, especially “Feast of Seven Fishes” with my Uncle Franny and my cousins and family. She loves being with Mom C and Bob on Christmas night. But she hasn’t seen her mom since last March and her mom bought her a ticket. I never protest…it’s her mom. But I wish she was going to be with me.

I find myself thinking more and more about when she was a child. I miss my little girl. I know she’ll always be my little girl, but not in the same ways. I miss how it felt when she’d sit on the couch next to me and we’d watch our “official” list of Christmas movies. Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch, Scrooge, (the 1951 version with Alistair Sim) and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

This year we only managed to watch two of them together. She spends her evenings chatting with her boyfriend and leaving me to watch my movies alone. I understand…but it still makes me sad.

I was thinking today about the Nativity, and especially about the little figure of Jesus.

Today I was at lunch, sitting there thinking, as I often do, and I was thinking about Jesus as a baby…as a tiny child, only a few hours old. I remembered one afternoon in 2011. My “adopted dad” Poppa John Iorizzo had been in the hospital and his wife Jewell and I had ridden together to see him. As we rode the elevator to his floor, there was a young mother with a stroller and an infant baby asleep in its fold. Instinctively, we both peered over her shoulder and looked at her baby. When the doors opened and we stepped out, I looked at Jewell and said; “You see that, momma,” (I always called her that) “there is something about a baby. I think that’s why Jesus came as a baby…because everyone would drop their guard and look at Him and find God.” I had only recently released my first Christmas book and it was based heavily on this one fact: that Jesus was a baby on that one scandalous night…and babies touch our hearts in ways no one else can.

Pop and Jewell are both gone now. I found myself blinking back tears today as I thought about this story, because I miss them so. And I found myself thinking more about Jesus the child.

There are people who struggle with Christmas each year. They struggle because they struggle with the idea of God. Something, or someone, in their lives had wounded them and soured them on God. God gets a bad rap far too often. I think he knows this and I also think –unsubstantiated as this idea might be—that He chose to enter history as a newborn baby for exactly that reason. People are often afraid of God the Father. They find the idea of God the Holy Spirit as a mystical notion that they can’t easily comprehend. But Jesus, as a baby…well that’s safe. That’s disarming. That calls to me when my heart aches and my soul is vexed from the pain this world feels.

Jesus, the child of Mary, lays still in his manger and all but begs me to take Him in my arms and love him…and let Him love me in return. A baby can’t judge me, He won’t attack me for my sin. A tiny child has no idea of my sordid history or my failures or my sorrows. He only sees me in the current moment, as I am.

On the night my daughter was born, I was transformed. I held that tiny form to my chest and I cried and I told her probably a thousand times “I love you, Morgan.” And every time I said it, I was hearing it ringing back in my own ears, from God the Father, “This is how I feel about you, my son. I love you too.”

What if you could go back there? What if you could lay aside your fear, or your doubts, or your anger with God because things haven’t turned out the way you wanted them to? What if you could set aside your shame, and your hurts, and your self-loathing over the person you think you were supposed to have become by now, but haven’t yet. What if you could stop shifting that heavy suitcase from one hand to the other, and just set it down, and pick up the infant son of God instead.

And what if He nudged His tiny face in close against your chest, to the place where your heart is, and He let out a tiny little baby sigh, and you felt God pouring out His immeasurable love on you through the sound that His son –God Himself in tiny human form—made in response to your overture of love.

Would you believe in Him again…or for the first time? Would you drop your guard, if only for a few minutes, for the safety of a child in your arms?

That’s really what Christmas is all about, you know. Brennan Manning once said, “The only thing more incredible than the fact that Jesus would die for me is the fact that he would even come here for me in the first place.” But he did. He came here to this damp, dark cave. He was born among animals, He was murdered on a cross, on display in a garbage dump, and I call Him Lord. He was the son of God, born to poverty, destined for death, and I have entrusted my soul to Him.

And on this night, 2017 years ago, He made His entrance into the world, unheralded, unrecognized, ignored by humanity. He was illegitimate, a scandal, the subject of rumor and innuendo. He came from Nazareth, which was known as the “City of Trash.” He was from the wrong side of the tracks.

None of those things mattered on that first Christmas night. All anyone knew was a baby was born out in the barn, and He was sleeping in a sheep-trough, when He should have been sitting on a throne.

He is here again. Every year, no matter what we think of Jesus, or God the Father, or the Holy Spirit, we think of the baby. We enter into the safety of the Advent season. When God seems to call a “truce” with our hearts and beckon us to the stable in Bethlehem once more. “Come see my son,” He says, “Come take Him in your arms, and let this love He has…this love I have for you, erase those silly things you think are keeping us apart. I did this for you. I sent Him here as a baby for you. To tear down the walls between us, and make a way for you to reconcile with me. I love you.”

This Advent season, as the world seems to be spinning more out-of-center than ever before, the baby still calls to us. He calls to you. Come to this manger. Come to this baby. Come home…

Advent Day 1: Silent Night

     A carefully decorated tree stands in the corner. It’s lights twinkle and flash in the darkened room. In the soft, colorful glow, a visitor could make out the familiar shapes of Christmas presents, painstakingly wrapped and carefully arranged beneath the boughs of the Christmas tree.

     Note cards attached to each present all bear the same name. The name of the daughter of the man who sits silently in the rocking chair across the room. He sits in the darkness, looking at the tree as it glimmers. Staring at it…but looking beyond it. Looking back through it’s branches, back to the place in his heart where his cherished memories are stored, the memories of the Christmases that have come before.

The presents are for his daughter. His little girl. His Daisy.

She is a grown woman now, married and living in another state. But in his heart –and especially at Christmas—she is his little girl.

And it Christmas Eve once more.

     He thinks of the Christmases they spent together when she was little and they lived in the house in the country. How he decorated for weeks, and how everywhere they looked, they found Christmas. He thinks of her when she was four years old, zipped in a Barbie sleeping bag, cuddling up to him to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and then “The Grinch” and then “Scrooge.”  He hears her sweet, child’s voice singing Christmas carols in the car as they drove to pick out a tree. He feels the biting wind against his cheek as he sneaks up a ladder to the roof of their house just as she is falling asleep, to jingle his sleigh bells, and call out to imaginary reindeer, and convince her once again that Santa himself is up on that roof. He smiles as he sees her squinting her eyes tight together to convince Santa that she is asleep.

     He blinks back tears as he remembers lying awake until late into the night, because he was even more excited than she was on those magical Christmas Eves.

She called him only this morning, to say “I love you Daddy” and to wish him a Merry Christmas and to assure him that she, and her husband and the kids, would all be there Christmas afternoon. They’re going to the in-laws in the morning and then they’ll come to see him after lunch, she says. He put on his best face and kept the sadness out of his voice as he told her he loved her, and to take her time and, “Just get here when you can.”

But he didn’t mean it. Not really. He wishes she was there right now. Like when she was little. He has presents for her husband and for his grandchildren. They’re stacked neatly in his bedroom and tomorrow he’ll lay them out carefully beneath the tree next to hers. But tonight…tonight only her gifts sit in the soft glow and twinkle of the lights. Because it reminds him of how it used to be. How briefly she was just a little girl. How there was a time when it was just the two of them.

     Her mom left when she was only eighteen months old. She’d never known an intact family at Christmas. This fact never seemed to bother her mother but it tore her daddy’s heart out. He would have endured all the sorrow and pain if it meant her daughter could wake up in the same house as both her parents. But that was not to be. Her mom remarried. He did not. He chose to devote himself to his only child. He reasoned in his heart that had he remarried, given his age, he likely would have married someone with young children as he had. This would mean spending more time with someone else’s children than with his own, and he never could reconcile that. So, he didn’t try.

     He remained single and devoted to his daughter and collected great Christmas memories in the hopes that they would dull the pain. It worked, for the most part, but under it all was the quiet sadness of a broken home, unfulfilled dreams of family, and the longing for the things he never had himself as a kid. He wanted this for himself as much as for his daughter. As it turned out…neither of them had it.  But he did his best to make up for the emptiness they both fought against at the holidays. He did pretty well until she got older. And fell in love. And got married.

     He breaks from his thoughts and turns to look at the little porcelain Nativity set on the coffee table near his chair. It had been his grandmother’s. It probably dates back to WWII or before. The figurines are hand painted and the little stable is made of wood. It looks like someone took the real Nativity and shrunk it down to miniature size. He thinks of his grandmother and how she carefully placed this crèche under the Christmas tree each year when he was a baby. How it mesmerized him even then. How it seemed to contain a tiny piece of the very spirits of each of the characters in the scene.

     He reaches out to touch the figure of Jesus. His eyes blur. “Jesus,” he whispers. It’s a one-word prayer of desperation, and loneliness, and disappointment. Not knowing how to say what his heart is feeling and not having the energy to try. Not tonight.

“Where have the years gone?” he wonders. “Why am I still alone?” He wonders if he should have remarried. He wonders if he should pack up and move to the town his daughter lives in. He wonders if he’d been wrong all these years. He wonders if he was a good enough dad. A good enough believer. Did he love this Jesus enough? Did he show it? He knows he shouldn’t think this way, but he can’t seem to stop the thoughts tonight. They come on their own.

     His fingers run over the smooth porcelain finish of the baby Jesus in the Nativity set. The same one that has told and retold the Christmas story for over 80 years, 60 of which encompass his life to this very night. His eyes blur with tears again.

It’s another Christmas Eve. Another Christmas Eve without his little girl, without the family he sought, without the voices of friends and family and festivities. He remembers when he had all that, for however briefly. He closes his eyes as the tears roll slowly down his cheeks. In the darkness, he feels the smoothness of the Jesus figurine. He sees his grandmother’s face and hears her sweet voice as she sings “Silent Night.” The voice morphs into that of his daughter, who seemed to inherit her great grandmother’s singing gift.

     Another Christmas Eve races toward midnight and he is awake. Awake like he was when his daughter was little and he was as excited about Santa’s arrival as she was. Only now he awaits the flood of memories and the reminder that he is old. Old and alone and someone’s granddad.

     The Night may be Silent, but his heart hears the loud refrain of the memories of Christmas past. Memories of his daughter. He drifts off to sleep, his hand still resting on the porcelain Jesus, laying on the little manger, coming to save us from our sins. And to turn adult women back into little girls for just one day each year.

The Advent Series: Introduction

Advent begins today. 

The word Advent comes from the Latin, "Adventus" which means the anticipation of Jesus' coming. The expectation of the central moment in the history of the world. Humanity splits like a saltine cracker at that moment in Bethlehem when God Himself, the Savior of all mankind, entered our world in the mortal flesh of a tiny baby. Even our calendar marks it's beginning with this momentous night...BC became AD the night He was born. 

His first cries echo through time. He wore our flesh, shared our joys and felt our sorrows. "He became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14) His birth was ignoble and unremarkable. Nobody had room for Him and He came at an uncomfortable time for the city of Bethlehem. Just like He often does for us now...coming at an inconvenient moment when we are forced to make a choice whether to pay attention to Him or miss the opportunity of His visit.

He was born in a barn; the most important birth in the history of the world and nobody noticed.  The King of Kings born among animals. Nobody but a few shepherds out in the fields who heard the angels proclaiming the news and came to see Him. 

Eight years ago I wrote a similar series of short stories during the Advent season. I was homeless, having lost my career in the crash of 2008. I was a dad. My daughter was living with her mom and her mom had married a man with a terrible chemical problem. My daughter was a daily witness to the abuse that goes along with that sort of life. I could not rescue her, and if I left town to find work she'd be without a protector, so I stayed. 

Staying meant, literally, living out of my car. Only eighteen months before, I had been a successful man, with a home and a career. But by December 2009 I had been homeless a little over a year, and Christmas was bearing down on me. My daughter needed me and I needed her. I also needed Jesus. I had been a Christian since age nine, but the events of those eighteen months had worn my Faith to a nub. I needed an Advent on a personal level. I wrote those short stories for her, during the Advent season, but in reality, they were for me. I was broken and battered and needed a return to the manger. I needed to see the baby in the straw and be reminded anew what it was He had come here for, and how He really did come down among us. 

I needed an Advent.

Eight Christmases later and here I am: In another state, with a good job working for my Alma Mater, my daughter lives with me and attends college here. She is healing, slowly, from the wounds she received at the hand of her mom's now-second-ex-husband. I never remarried. sometimes I think I know why but in reality...I can't explain it. Looking back, my daughter needed me to be only hers for those painful years. I think, too, that God was isolating me. I had a desert to journey through and it was not a trip to make with a companion. I am working, I am living indoors, I am stronger in my Faith than I was that December morning in 2009 when I wrote the first of those stories. But in many ways I am seeking another Advent this year. I find I am more sentimental this Christmas than usual. That's saying a lot, because I am very sentimental by nature. I am a hopeless romantic and romance isn't always just about love. There is romance in memory. Romance in remembering. Romance in great stories from happy times. In that way, I am most romantic. I miss Christmas. I miss the Sears "Wish Book" and the monorail that carried us above the toy department at the John Wannamaker store in my hometown of Philadelphia. I miss my Grandmother's house and the way the air took a feeling of happiness and joy. I miss the anticipation of being a child at Christmas. I miss the delight of the TV specials and the music on the big console stereo in the living room. 

I miss the porcelain Nativity set under the tree. The one with Jesus, and Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds and the barn animals. I miss looking at the tiny figure in the straw and trying to comprehend how He was God. God in the form of a tiny baby.

I have no idea what became of that Nativity set. When my grandmother passed it went to my mother. I haven't seen it since. But I see it in my heart. I can feel it. I can feel the smoothness of the porcelain and the rough texture of the straw. 

Life has taken unexpected turns for me...as it does for all of us at times. In my heart, I am "Clark W. Griswold" and Christmas is my Superbowl. But Christmases never did become what I'd hope they would when I was a boy and dreaming of how Christmas would be one day when I had a family of my own. The picture never developed. Even now...a single dad with a nineteen year old daughter. We decorate far more than two people in a townhouse probably should. But we are both from the same cloth. She is a Christmas lover as I am. 

Under all my fantastical dreams through the years, of how Christmas was going to be one day...there was always the Nativity set and the underlying truth that this day -with all it's over driven commercialism and crass marketing-- is still about that baby in the manger. People have tried...Lord have they tried, to make it about everything else but Him. But still He smiles from every twinkling light, He wears every ugly sweater, His is the voice singing harmony to every carol. The world will never succeed in removing Him from this day. Because He is this day. His cry still echoes across the world. 2017 years later, His birth still remains the most significant day in the history of Creation.

This has been a hard year. In April I released a book recounting the six years I spent homeless. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, revisiting all that pain and loss. My daughter and I have been through a lot this year. As Christmas approaches I find myself in desperate need of an Advent again. I need Jesus. In a fresh, renewed, view. Like seeing Him for the first time in that manger. 

So I decided to embark on another Advent journey this year. Twenty-Four short stories centering around The Nativity, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, and scenes from childhood. I have little idea what this will look like on Christmas Eve when it wraps up. As I did in 2009, I am not writing these stories in advance. I will write the night before and see what the Holy Spirit might stir up. (In truth, Day one was written yesterday, but nothing else is completed at this moment) The characters in these stories face real-life heartaches. These are not always happy-ending tales, but they all share the hope of the Baby from Bethlehem. 

This may also become a book at some point in the future, as my first Advent series became "The Ragamuffin's Christmas." But for now...this is really an Advent calendar. I have no idea what will be behind each door until I open it. I hope there is someone out there in need of an Advent too. Someone who needs Jesus again -or for the first time. I hope these stories bring Him a little closer to all of us.

Merry Christmas to all, and God Bless us...everyone.

Craig

December 3, 2017