Christmas in Bend: Silent Night

Right now I am sitting in bed, in complete darkness save the glow of my laptop screen.  All I can hear is the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard and the soft breath of my little son, asleep in a portable crib beside our bed.  Jeff is gone — performing his usual Christmas Eve ritual of making something special for me to wake up to Christmas morning.  So, I am here in the silence of this holy night. 

Tonight we went to Christmas Eve service with Jeff’s mom.  The theme for the evening was the silence of this night, on the hushed holiness of the Eve of Christ’s birth, “as if the whole galaxy were holding its breath.”  It is true.  As we drove home tonight it was silent in the car.  Few cars were on the road.  Businesses were closed.  There were no jam packed parking lots or lines extending outside storefronts as there had been just hours before.  It had slowly falled into a silent night.  I remember innumerable Christmas Eves growing up, driving home from my Uncle Tom and Aunt Jan’s house in Hillsboro.  The long car ride was always silent except for soft Christmas music.  We sang along and savored the quietness, the anticipation of the holy day ahead. 

My favorite part of the Christmas Eve service is always the candle-lighting. We all hold these little plastic candle holders with half-burnt white candles that look very tacky in the daylight.  But … at that special moment the sanctuary lights are faded to nothing and the candles begin to be lit, one by one as we turn to our neighbor and within moments the entire sanctuary is aglow with a hundred flickering flames.  I can’t help but get goosebumps every time.  There is nothing magical about all lighting candles, but it does create a stillness, a quiet hush that draws us to recognize the holiness of this special occasion.  Christmas is not ruined for me by commercialism and Santa-ism.  Chrismas is still the most precious, holy, blessed holiday–where we celebrate God’s greatest gift.

Tonight as I crept into the room, I tiptoed over to where Dutch is asleep and watched him, watched the flicker of his eyelids, listened to the sound of his breath.  I tucked the blankets around him and checked to make sure his socks were still on.  It was all I could do to restrain from leaning down to smell his breath–my favorite scent in the world.  Having a son has truly made me appreciate the wonder of Christmas all that much more, and as he sleeps, his precious silent stillness is sacred to me.  His perfectly formed little body, still and at rest.  I stop typing for a moment as he stirs ever so slightly, his legs rustling in the blankets, his mouth making tiny little sucking sounds.  And then it is silent again.  I hear Jeff quietly open the front door as he sneaks in from his creative labors.  The sweetness of this silent night is delicious.   Sleep tight.