The Day After Christmas

Snow piling on the apples remaining in the backyard tree

It's snowing today. All day it will be snowing, they say. This is the first set of big storms to come through this season. I love watching the western horizon in search of the edge of the front passing over, but today there are no edges anywhere. It's only white and the mountain range I live on has disappeared from view at the end of the street. The backyard apple tree still bears those poor golden delicious gems never picked and now bearing about three inches of snow. I pay them homage here today out of respect for their fortitude and beauty out there in the cold, wet element.  They seem to believe that they will soon be rescued to the dining room table full of warmth  filled with hopeful exchanges.

There are no fruit trees in the front yard. Only an enormous, very old sycamore tree anchoring the west side of the house and a equally strong, yet more graceful birch tree holding down the east side. And in the middle across the street almost obscured in white the grandpa with his Santa hat is working hard to clear the ice and snow from the driveway. One of his grandchildren has been standing at the fence between her small body and the neighbor's backyard where other children play. They don't beckon her over and nor does she try. She only watches through the fence. I'm surprised to see her here today and I wonder if she'll be staying.

In the memory of early June of this year when it was hot, so hot we wished for snow, she and her four siblings were removed from the home by state officials. It wasn't safe for children, we have always known. In the privacy of our living rooms and kitchens we, the neighbors, have made many calls to the state seeking help for these vulnerable ones. Suddenly, that day in June the cars pulled up, the children loaded in, and they were gone.  It's not clear if her appearance today is a visit or a return to the setting of abuse and neglect. It's not possible to know. However, I will be watching to see and listening to hear the familiar sights and sounds of children pained by those charged to care for them.

Today is the day after Christmas and the little girl across the street is pulling her old, frozen bike out of the drift hoping that it's still a good ride. She presses forward for life, for interaction, for activity. The grandpa issues his familiar bellowing scream meant to keep her down, keep her in check and to keep her under his drunken thumb. The bike returns to its familiar position in the pile of junk against the house. She goes inside, closes the door.

Just yesterday we celebrated the arrival of another child. We sang for and gifted our lives to that child, the Christ child, and today virtually anywhere on our planet, clothed in snow or not, we see children in deep need of our songs calling for justice and our gifts rescuing them from danger.

This year, unlike many previous, it's more clear to me why the Christ child had to come. Unable to find the right words to describe this well, I leave it at this: The Christ child had to break into time and history to show us what truth, justice, and hope look like. Otherwise, we would never know. The Christ simply had to come.