A shriek of frustration came from the dining room.<\/p>\n
\nI poked my head in from the kitchen, where I was drying dishes. The table was cluttered with wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons, bows, scissors, felt, thread, buttons and a sewing machine. Half draped across the sewing machine was a red felt Christmas stocking. It looked like my wife, Kate, had just thrown the stocking.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s ruined!\u201d she cried.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThat.\u201d She jabbed a finger at the stocking. \u201cThere are moth holes in the back. How could I not have noticed? Now Frances won\u2019t have a stocking!\u201d<\/p>\n
\nKate had been working on it for weeks. \u201cMy brothers and sister and I all had handmade stockings,\u201d she\u2019d explained. \u201cSo I have to sew Frances a stocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nFrances was our one-year-old daughter, at that moment asleep in her crib. It didn\u2019t matter that Christmas is one of the busiest seasons for Kate, a priest at an Episcopal church. It didn\u2019t matter that she\u2019d had to trek all over Manhattan to finally find a tiny fabric store in Chinatown with the kind of wool felt she needed. It especially didn\u2019t matter that I\u2019d pointed out Frances was too young to care about stockings, or that I\u2019d pleaded for a peaceful, stress-free Christmas.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou could try being more supportive,\u201d she\u2019d replied.<\/p>\n
\nNow Christmas was just days away. Soon my mom, her friend and my brother would be arriving to stay with us. Kate had to write a sermon. Gifts were waiting to be wrapped. And there was the stocking. Kate picked it up and ran her finger over the holes.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe felt must have been old,\u201d she said. She\u2019d already sewn ribbon across the top. Flower-shaped buttons and gold thread to write Frances\u2019 name lay on the table. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I have time to start over.\u201d She looked at me. \u201cFrances needs a stocking!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWell,\u201d I said, \u201cI tried to tell you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHer face hardened. \u201cJim, I don\u2019t need a Christmas lecture right now. If you\u2019re not going to help, let me figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nShe turned back to the stocking. I retreated to the kitchen.<\/p>\n
\nThe counter was cluttered there too. Kate was baking sugar cookies to give to her colleagues. One batch cooled on a rack. Powdered sugar spilled from a bowl. The oven timer ticked down. Gift bags of chocolate from parishioners lined up next to presents for Frances, some from people I didn\u2019t even know. The timer beeped.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cCould you take those cookies out?\u201d Kate called. I set down the dishtowel. I don\u2019t even like sugar cookies,<\/em> I thought.<\/p>\n \nThis wasn\u2019t the first time Kate and I had disagreed about Christmas. I remembered airily telling her roommate when we were dating how foolish I thought it was for couples to argue over such a thing. \u201cWhat\u2019s to argue about? It\u2019s just a holiday.\u201d \nWell, the next year I did have a few<\/em> objections. Why did Kate insist on getting a tree when we weren\u2019t even going to be home? We were spending that Christmas with family on the West Coast.<\/p>\n \nDidn\u2019t she know some of those ornaments she\u2019d saved all those years were kind of tacky? I came home from work one day to hear Bing Crosby on the stereo. Bing Crosby\u2019s not really my style. And this business of making cookies for everyone at church\u2014what a hassle! Add to that hours of gift-wrapping and exhausting Christmas services. I felt like some sort of Christmas machine was taking over our lives.<\/p>\n \nActually, there was more to it than that. I have a vexed relationship with Christmas. I\u2019m not sure why. My own holiday memories are wonderful. I\u2019d lie awake late into the night at my grandmother\u2019s house, my brother in the next bed, both of us straining to hear the slightest rustle of Santa\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n \nWe competed over who got to hang the final angel ornament on the Christmas tree advent calendar. We got to open one gift on Christmas Eve, a moment of exquisite, torturous deliberation. We ate roast beef and lots of pie.<\/p>\n \nSomehow, though, by the time I was grown up, I\u2019d decided Christmas was one of my least favorite holidays. I love the church season of Advent. I love Christmas Eve services with all their candles and ancient carols. And I love especially the idea of setting time aside to remember that moment 2,000 years ago when everything changed.<\/p>\n \nI\u2019m overcome staring at the slightly beat-up, out-of-scale cr\u00e8che our church erects before the altar. I try to reconcile the enormity of the event with the tiny helplessness of the baby. Some vast mystery of God is expressed in that helplessness. What is it?<\/p>\n \nThe rest of Christmas, though, I can do without. All the gift-giving feels like consumerism run amok. The cheer seems forced. People exhaust themselves lugging packages and fractious kids across the country. Where\u2019s the God in that?<\/p>\n \nI took the cookies from the oven and set them on the cooling rack. Why did that stocking matter so much to Kate? Why, for that matter, were we arguing so much more this year? I\u2019d made my peace with the Christmas ornaments. And I thought we\u2019d solved the Bing Crosby problem\u2014Kate played him when I wasn\u2019t around.<\/p>\n \nSomehow, though, Frances\u2019 arrival seemed to have ratcheted up the holiday tension. I dried the last of the dishes and decided to leave Kate alone. If she wanted to let the Christmas machine whip her into a frenzy, fine.<\/p>\n \nWe got ready for bed, brushing our teeth in silence. I wandered into the living room and looked to where my old stocking\u2014made by a friend of my parents\u2019\u2014and Kate\u2019s hung, softly lit by Christmas tree lights.<\/p>\n \nKate\u2019s was pretty cute, I had to admit, with \u201cKatie\u201d sewn in felt letters and a little jingle bell on the toe. I tried to picture her all those years ago holding the stocking in her tiny hands. What would Frances look like holding hers?<\/p>\n \nWe got into bed. Kate lay quietly, hands folded across her chest. I pretended to read. \u201cI\u2019m not going to make the stocking,\u201d she said quietly. I put down my book. \u201cI\u2019d have to start from scratch and I don\u2019t have time. I still have to write a sermon and wrap up those cookies.\u201d<\/p>\n \nI was about to find a delicate way to say, \u201cTold you so,\u201d when I looked over and saw her tears. I took her hand. \u201cKate, what\u2019s wrong?\u201d She didn\u2019t answer. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong? Tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n \nShe was silent a while longer, then suddenly it all came out in a rush. \u201cI\u2019m a terrible mom and Frances is going to have the worst Christmas. I know you say she won\u2019t know, but I\u2019ll know. My mom always did so many great things for us at Christmas. She and Dad used to set up our little cr\u00e8che, and late Christmas Eve night they\u2019d put the baby Jesus in there and I always thought he appeared by magic. Now we\u2019re so far away from them and you don\u2019t even care about Christmas. How do I make all that happen for Frances by myself? If I was a better mom I could do it, but I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \nShe wiped her eyes. All my ranting about Christmas, my tsk<\/em>-ing about to-do lists\u2014it shriveled up. I reached over and put my arms around her. \u201cDon\u2019t say that,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019re a great mom.\u201d We lay like that a long time.<\/p>\n \nI thought about the messy dining room table, the sugar cookies, the gifts. And I thought about the stocking. How on earth could I ever have objected to giving Frances, no matter how old, a taste of beloved Christmas memories?<\/p>\n \nThat wasn\u2019t the Christmas machine. That was love, as clear an expression of God\u2019s vast mystery as anyone could ask for. Besides, it mattered to Kate and Kate mattered to me. I held her tight. And I told her we were all\u2014yes, all of us\u2014going to have a wonderful Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A shriek of frustration came from the dining room. I poked my head in from the kitchen, where I was drying dishes. The table was cluttered with wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons, bows, scissors, felt, thread, buttons and a sewing machine. Half draped across the sewing machine was a red felt Christmas stocking. It looked like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[759],"class_list":["post-21711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-better-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\n<<\/p>\n