Christmas Isn’t Canceled

Christmas isn’t canceled. The New Year is coming, fresh and frosty.

Joy can be found on a child’s face, tasting snowflakes—slippery, slow, and soft.

Or loudly! Roaring around the corner with a new T-Rex toy. Tyrant lizard king or toddler?

A “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day”— first weeks, then months, nearly a year! Wash hands. Rinse, repeat. To grandmother’s house we don’t go. Friendships fray like our body politic. Lines at the food bank snake down the street.

Goodbye, love forever…a final phone call, spoken from screens blurred by tears, falling like a thousand raindrops in the first storm of summer. Out of energy, short on time, can parents fill the fridge on a politician’s pittance? Does anyone hear if you howl in a hurricane?

Yet we wait in hope. Bells on bobtails will ring! Virtual choirs shall sing! Honor the night-shift nurse; celebrate the scientist. A babe will be born in Bethlehem, the songs still say.

Have our choices changed? Do or do not; there is no try/Things done and left undone. What matters rarely can be measured, even by Jeff Bezos’ bank account.

This is the year of sudden sickness, tarnished tinsel, and heavy hearts. But the end is not nigh. Winter reigns but for a season; ‘ere long the green blade riseth. Let your light shine so others can see. Just over the horizon.

[Image Credit: Christian M. M. Brady via Flickr]