Christmas Presence

Two years ago forty-one people came to my house for Christmas dinner, some merchants and bishops and poets and about sixteen barbarians, mostly Goths and Visigoths and several Huns, hairy savages who hunkered down at the table and ate like wild swine, belching and shrieking, and spent the evening pillaging and plundering and left the place in ruins. We were picking food off the chandelier for weeks. And after I swept up the refuse and offal and sluiced out the dining room, I said to myself, "No more hairy savages for Christmas." So last year, I invited only civilized people, and in case the barbarians showed up, I had a catapult installed on the roof that would hurl boulders at them and pots of boiling oil.  It was a pleasant and civilized Christmas, but as the bishops and poets and merchants sat and drowsed over dessert, one poet piped up and said, "Oh, by the way, what happened to those little pig-eyed fellows who came for Christmas last year, the ones who wiped their ...

Wallace Purling was nine that year and in the second grade, though he should have been in the fourth. He was bigand clumsy, slow in movement and mind, but well liked by the others in his class. He was always a helpful boy, willing and smiling, and the natural protector of the younger children. Wally fancied the idea of being a shepherd with a flute in the Christmas pageant that year, but Miss Lumbard assigned him to a more important role. After all, she reasoned, the innkeeper did not have too many lines, and Wally's size would make his refusal of lodging to Joseph more forceful. And so the usual large, partisan audience gathered for the town's yearly aextravaganza of crooks and creche, of beards, crowns, halos and a whole stageful of squeaky voices. No one onstage or off was more caught up in the magic of the night than Wallace Purling The time came when Joseph appeared, slowly, tenderly guiding Mary to the door of the inn. Joseph knocked hard on the wooden door set into the p...

 Christmas morning, I’m walking alone And everything’s perfect the snow’s coming down I can hear the breath of God in my ear He whispers a secret  - oh I wish I could speak the language of stars Wish I knew what He says Just off of the porch of my childhood home wind kisses my cheek but I’m warm inside a jacket and sweaters and shirts that I borrowed from my own old dresser drawers in the closet in the room that still belongs to a teenage son that left years ago. snowflakes fall like memories and hopes each of them different but all just the same I stick out my tongue to taste them all They melt like Communion bread placed in my mouth By a priest leaning over the alter rail This must be Eucharist, this must be peace I’m a child again, I’m free, I’m a man with a family  I’m my wife sleeping next to me on a bed that we bought,  on a bed we could finally afford I’m my mother growing older and smaller and finer Growing sweet and edgy and soft I’m my father forgetting whe...