christmas

She blinked once, then twice, and yet again, sure what she viewed was just another part of this fantasy world that she had stepped into when her feet touched the green grass of Ireland.

A magic came out of your smileGold thread of gold threadStars illuminating the skyThereWhere in the mountain streamHealing waterTears of ice as a gift to me

Paying twenty-five dollars for me was your mistake, ma__m. I__ not worth more than fifteen.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in life and take things for granted.

She stared at the castle. She had actually been summoned to a castle. A week before Christmas.

I long to look at my holiday season with eyes that see the Christ in Christmas.

Do you need help with anything?" he asked with a wicked arched brow. "Maybe with cookies for Santa."Scowling because no one was here but us, I said, "You're a bit late for that. Santa already came."He hadn't moved, but I knew better than to think he would. Flynn was a pro at filling the bubble air space that was meant to be private and personal. "And were you a good girl?" he asked.Awkwardly folding my arms over my chest, I said, "Not sure, I haven't checked. But you needn't look. We all know you are all bad."Laughing, he said, "Yeah, well, there are other things worth unwrapping."Grinding my teeth, I asked, "What, you didn't get your Ho, Ho, Ho, last night?"Tossing back another full belly laugh, he said, "You know you're kind of funny when you want to be.

This is difficult to comprehend when one pauses to consider the character of Christ. Admittedly there have been many false caricatures of this Person, but an unbiased look at His life quickly reveals an individual of enormous compassion and incredible integrity.

I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Later the place was as deserted as Malcolm Muggeridge's Christmas party of fellow intellectuals.

It is now, at Advent, that I am given the chance to suspend all expectation...and instead to revel in the mystery.

Santa was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The after-action report was signed by the field commander, the director of operations, the secretary of the Office of Sidhe Affairs, and the chief battle-mage. Janus had signed it _ and Janus__ word could be counted upon for anything he chose to put his name to. Old Saint Nicholas, the Sidhe Lord of the Yuletide, was as dead as a door-nail.It didn__ stick.

From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son's incarceration as 'a short break before college?' A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off?Santa.That's right. A man.

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn__ go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god__ knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don__ share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death.

And so this is Christmas...what have you done?

Christmas is a time of sharing, and joy and grace. There's no better time to entertain family and friends than now.

But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the out-door world, for he meant to light up the home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food: he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred,and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless--fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them,but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learnt the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.

Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. It will not have its intended effect until we feel desperately the need for a Savior.