Christmas

Christmas now and then

December 21, 2017 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

I write this in the early morning of December 21, four days until Christmas.

The presents have been hidden but not yet wrapped. The tree is up, the lights hung on the house. The tiny plastic wise man who has for so long roamed he downstairs in search of our Nativity remains hopefully (and haplessly) searching. Last I checked, he was perched atop the clock in the living room. Moved there, I will add, by hands not my own. I’ve narrowed the suspects down to a certain daughter and son, and now I’m waiting to see when and where he will move again. That is one of the finer things about having teenagers as children. My kids are too cool for Santa and too sophisticated to go looking for elves. But that plastic wise man on the clock has left me believing they still hold to the magic that is this time, and that I have taught them well enough to know they can do their own small parts in spreading it.

Christmas has snuck up on me this year.

Such a thing has never happened. As a boy, the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day was the longest slog imaginable, more difficult even than the month before summer vacation. Back then, the newspaper would publish a little cartoon at the bottom of the front page that included how many days more I had to wait. Thirty seemed an insurmountable number. Twenty wasn’t much better. By the single digits, my parents were praying it would all be over soon. The pace of time was so slow as to be maddening.

But this morning I poured my coffee in shock of the calendar on the refrigerator. The twenty-first? Impossible. How could Christmas get here so fast? Where have I been?

I’ve read that the passage of time feels quicker to adults more than children because of simple math. A month feels like days because I have so many months behind me. The thirty or so days since Thanksgiving comprises only a small percentage of the time I’ve lived, whereas the little kid across the street (the one currently searching for reindeer tracks out in his yard) has fallen to the belief that Christmas will never get here. This past month is a much larger chunk of his life.
It makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it. Still, I’m not wholly buying into the theory. Most people I know will never admit it, but they secretly abhor Christmas. Having to wonder where the money will come from for all those gifts. Having to haul all of those decorations from the attic. The travel. And really, how many times can you hear “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” before you want to shove an ice pick into your ear?

Family squabbles. Family worries. Realizing you once viewed this time of year with anticipation—“What’s going to happen next!”—and now it’s more the dread of “What’s going to happen next?”

Bah. Humbug.

Believe me, I know. That kid across the street? Give him time. Put a few Christmases behind him, he won’t be out there looking for reindeer tracks. He’ll be the father standing at the door yelling for his kid to get inside. Or he’ll be the neighbor looking from an upstairs window and secretly hoping that maybe there really is a track somewhere. At the edge of the roof, maybe. Santa making a practice run.

Time. That’s what I’m thinking about this year. Where it’s all going and gone.

What tends to trip up so many about Christmas is its insistence on slowing us down and reflecting a little. I can think of no other holiday like it. That’s a tough thing for a lot of us to do. Maybe that’s why we’re so insistent on keeping busy this time of year. We’d rather feel stressed than silent. We’re more comfortable thinking it’s all about what’s happening now rather than what happened then.

That’s it’s about us and not the Child.

We are coming fast upon an occasion so wonderful, so life altering, that the entirety of Western civilization has divided history itself into all that happened before it and all that has happened since. A birth that came not with royal aplomb, but quiet mystery. In four days we will celebrate whatever it is we love most. To some, it will be family. To others, things wrapped in shiny paper. Still more will celebrate nothing at all.

Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t change the fact that baby was born for us all that we may know once and finally that we are not alone, that there exists in each of us a worth and a purpose unimaginable, and that with him we may be battered by life, but never bettered. Love will win in the end. Light has overcome darkness. Dawn will chase away every dark night.

Let it be so.

Meredith’s Christmas Wish

December 24, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

Meredith's Christmas Insofar as Christmas Eve traditions go I have many, each born from years upon years of practice, whittled down and streamlined for maximum effect.

This year is different. And as it’s turned out, I’m not alone. For proof, I offer the hundreds of people on either side of me.

We’ve been here on Main Street for about two hours now, some standing, others sitting, our signs and American flags at the ready, waiting for news. At some point in the very near future, an off-duty policeman will steer his car into the intersection of Routes 340 and 608 just up the street where, lights flashing, he will block all traffic. Santa is here and at the ready. To my right, a crowd has gathered in front of the elementary school. Fire trucks, gleaming red and decorated with wreaths, ready their sirens.

Meredith is coming home.

She’s been gone for months, trading her quiet home for the busy hospital at the University of Virginia in order to battle her Stage IV cancer. Her one wish was to come home for Christmas. The doctors granted her two days.

Word spread.

Here we all are.

This is what small towns do. We’re constantly up in one another’s business, as separated by race and religion and politics as anyone else, have our own sorrows and our own burdens to carry, but we love each other. And the harder our times come, the deeper our love gets.

There is no other place any of us would rather be than here. Right here, where only a few weeks ago our town’s Christmas parade eased by. We celebrated then in the midst of floats and candy and fake snow pumped from the back of lifted trucks bearing American flags and names like Country Boy’s Dream. We celebrate now for deeper reasons, as evidenced by the tears in so many eyes.

Word is that Meredith has just exited the highway. Ten minutes.

There is joy here. Should there be one thing you must know, it’s that. Christmas joy, the purest kind. The sort which bubbles up from a hopeful expectation that lives inside us all, whether buried or visible for all to see. A joy that defies hardship and pain, one that bears us up under the hard things. Doesn’t matter who you are or what your story is, we’re all hope-shaped creatures. We need it, no less than air.

Far off, a siren wails. A police car ready at the intersection. Chairs shuffling. Everyone stands.

Across the street, I hear someone say: “She’s coming.”

I think about this little girl, ten years old. A baby. And I think about that other baby as well, whose birth we will celebrate a little over twelve hours from now, that miracle wrapped in a baby boy.

Hope fulfilled.

Flashing lights. A county sheriff in the lead, a silver car behind. And trailing a mass of fire trucks, honking and blowing their sirens.

People waving, cheering. The crown of a little girl’s head.

Meredith, come the calls.

Merry Christmas. We love you.

And as she passes all the questions that have preyed upon me in these last hours fall away. I no longer wonder why God would allow this sickness to befall a child or why the world must be as broken as it is. Instead I think of that babe again, lying in a manger. I think of how so much has changed since that night in Bethlehem and also how so little, that the world is so different but the people in it are not. The things we pine for now are the very ones pined for then. Peace. Purpose. Healing. Life.

Should you have a mind, do me a favor? Say a prayer for little Meredith. I know I will. She has warmed my heart this year. She has touched us all. And because of her, my community has given me a gift this Christmas that I will not soon forget. We are bombarded each day with stories of just how much humanity gets wrong, but we can get a whole lot right, too.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Joseph’s gift

December 17, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

I have always held a soft spot for the little guy, that nameless and faceless mass of everyday folk who make little noise and little splash but without whom the world would fall apart. I’ve always held a soft spot for Christmas as well. Mostly, I guess, because the one has very much to do with the other. Christmas is a little guy time of year.

It’s always about the baby, have you ever noticed that? As it should be, don’t get me wrong. It’s the baby and the angels and the shepherds, the virgin who kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. Among all the stories I have ever read or been told, the one of that first Christmas will always remain my favorite. Hope, wrapped up in a little boy.

For me, though, it isn’t only about the Christ child. Not the shepherds in the fields, those poorest of the poor who were the first recipients of the Good News. Not the heavenly hosts, ten thousand angels gathered where a single one could lay waste to an entire world. Not the magi, following a star. No. The one I most often think of this time of year is the one least mentioned, not only in the story of Christ’s birth but also in much of the Gospels.

Joseph.

Poor, neglected Joseph.

It began so well for him, this man who was a descendant of King David and Abraham. Engaged to a young girl named Mary, who, as it happened, came to be with a child not his own.

A man in Joseph’s position in that culture and at that time could have done some pretty horrible things to an unfaithful fiancee. Could have had her publicly humiliated for certain. Stoned, if that had been his inclination.

Joseph, though, had nothing of the sort in mind. Matthew says that instead, Joseph “was minded to put her away privily.”

Quietly, so as not to cause Mary further burden. It is an example of Joseph’s righteousness according to Matthew, but I’ve always thought there was more to that decision than Joseph being a righteous man—a description, by the way, that is a supreme compliment in Jewish culture. I think it was just as much that he loved Mary, loved her deeply, in spite of what had happened.

But of course like most plans, Joseph’s did not line up exactly with God’s. He was visited in a dream by an angel who said Mary’s child was indeed the Holy Spirit’s, and the child shall be named Jesus.

Let that sit for a moment. The woman you were to marry—the woman you love—has betrayed you by getting herself pregnant by someone else. You’re brokenhearted and not a little bit angry. But then an angel visits you, scaring you half to death and telling you the most amazing and inexplicable story you’ve ever heard. What do you do?

Says Matthew: “And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”

I often wonder what Joseph thought and felt the night of the Child’s birth—a Child not his own.

The naming of a Jewish boy was the father’s prerogative. Joseph did not name Jesus. In the genealogy of Christ that comprises much of Matthew’s first chapter, Joseph is rendered little more than an afterthought: “Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.”

I wonder how it would make a Jewish man of that time feel, not being known as the father of a son but the husband of a wife.

Those early years must have been a frightening time. Humbling and confusing. Maybe even lonely.

After the wise men who visited had gone, the angel came again to warn that Herod was looking for the child. He told Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt. Joseph obeyed.

The angel returned after Herod died to tell Joseph to return his family (not “your wife and son,” but “the Child and His mother”) to Israel. Joseph obeyed.

The angel then returned again, telling him to settle in the regions of Galilee.

Joseph obeyed.

When Christ was twelve, Mary and Joseph took him to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. Jesus remained behind to listen to an question the teachers. Mary and Joseph, no doubt being as tired and stressed as any parent, assumed the boy was somewhere in the caravan. They found him a day later. Joseph didn’t understand Jesus’s explanation.

I bet there was a lot of that.

I bet there was a mess of things that Joseph never really understood.

That is the last mention of Joseph in the Bible. It is assumed he died, but no one knows for sure. Maybe it’s fitting that a man portrayed as little more than a bit player in the greatest story ever told exits the stage in such a manner. No bows, no curtain calls. That sounds like Joseph. Play your part, then leave quietly.

I’m sure that’s not the way it all happened. I’m certain Joseph played a big part in the life of Christ. Wouldn’t be nice to have a glimpse of that, though? A single verse of Joseph the carpenter, showing the boy how to build a door or a wall.

Because in the end he spent his life in the greatest of pursuits. Joseph was a father. A step one in a heavenly sort of way, but a dad nonetheless. So here’s to him this Christmas. That unsung hero, the ultimate little guy. A man who did nothing more than what we all should do—ponder not what role we play in history’s long and winding tale, only obey, and take care of the little ones.

Tidings of comfort

December 11, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Evernote Camera Roll 20131229 090031 Two years ago:

This Christmas began what I hope will become a new tradition for the Coffey house. On Christmas Eve, my daughter sat at the grand piano in the equally grand foyer of the local hospital. For forty-five minutes, she provided background music to the steady pulse of whispers and footsteps and intercom pages.

“Silent Night.” “Joy to the World.” “Away in a Manger.” The notes shaky at first, timid, only to gain in both confidence and volume as the moments drew on.

I sat with my son and wife on the worn leather sofa in the middle of the foyer. The perfect spot to listen and nod and smile in support. Also, the perfect spot to see what would happen when those songs of hope and joy were played in such a setting. To see a bit of light cast into such a darkened place.

We were alone for a while. There is a current to every public place, one that flows and meanders of its own accord regardless of what attempts are made to alter it. So we all settled in, us on the sofa and she at the keys, joining the crowd rather than ask the crowd to join us.

The automatic doors leading to the parking lot squeaked with a certain poetic regularity. The people who entered did so with a slow purpose, as if walking through molasses. Their arms ladened with ribboned bags overstuffed with gifts. Plastic smiles that sunk no deeper than the first layer of skin greeted us. Their thoughts were plain enough that I saw them well. It is Christmas, these people thought, and I am here—not at home, but here.

My daughter played: Let every heart/Prepare Him room.

In those small spaces where the elevators clustered, those coming in met those going out. These people, too, could not hide their thoughts. I watched as orderlies pushed the freed in wheelchairs as worn and tired as the smile on the patients’ faces. They were greeted at the doors by family members who rushed in from the circular drive just outside—rushed in, I thought, not to escape the cold, but to rescue their loved ones before some unknown doctor reconsidered the discharge order.

My daughter bolder now, smiling down at the ivory keys: And heaven and nature sing.

A nurse stopped on her way to some far-flung department to listen. An old man sat in the chair across from us, drawn there more by the music than the promise of comfort. The December sun glinted off the wall of windows in front of us. Puffy clouds raced overhead, molded into shapes by the wind. More people stopped—patients and visitors, security officers, doctors. Not for long and only to smile as those notes rang out (Round yon virgin, mother and child) before walking on with a nod and a smile.

And slowly, ever so gently, that current changed.

It was not diverted, nor could it have been. This was a hospital, after all. In such places where so much life mingles with so much death, the heaviness in the air is both constant and unchanging. And yet I saw smiles during my daughter’s recital, and I heard the hard sighs of comfort and the sound of applause.

And I knew then this great truth—we cannot heal what has been irrevocably broken. We cannot bring peace in a life where there will always be war, nor healing to a place fallen from grace. Such things are beyond our ability. We have no such power.

Yet even if we are powerless to change this world, we still have the power to nudge it a bit in the direction it should go. To bring joy to another, even for a moment. To inspire and lift up. To give hope.

To endure.

Her favorite gift

December 29, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

Ask any kid—or better yet, search your own memory— and you’ll find the most pressing question in the days proceeding Christmas is three one-syllable words:

What’d you get?

I’ve both asked and answered that question hundreds of times in my life (and if I’m honest, I’ll confess to asking and answering it much more now than when I was seven). I think that’s okay. So much is made of how commercial Christmas has become and how secular everything has gotten. Both are valid points. But hey, everyone wants to know when you’ve gotten new stuff.

As for the Coffey household, I’ll say Santa was pretty good to us this year. Some of us would say he was better to us than we deserve. That, too, is okay. What better presents to receive than grace and mercy? Which is pretty much what the world’s presents were on that first Christmas long ago, all wrapped up in bone and flesh and blood.

My son would say we had “a good haul.” A pretty typical response from a pretty average ten-year-old boy. But there’s someone I know who received far more this year, and that’s what I wanted to share.

Many of you know my wife is a teacher. If you have one of those in your life, then you understand my saying that profession could be best described as a thankless one. Lots of work, lots of stress, lots of blame. Sometimes, though, there are those little rays of light that break through an otherwise dour world. One of her co-workers received just that on the last day before Christmas vacation.

This was what a little girl in class delivered to her:

Deciphering a child’s art is an art unto itself. It can often be a tricky thing, even for an experienced teacher. Thankfully, said teacher has spent enough years in a classroom to know just how to coax meaning without offending.

“Tell me about this wonderful picture,” she said.

The girl told her it was the two of them holding hands as they lay upon the playground grass trying to make shapes out of the clouds. The white, winged figure? An angel, of course. It’s a pretty day, she said, but see that swirl of black in the middle on the left side? There’s a bad storm coming. Already, it’s blocking out the sun.

Beautiful, yes? The teacher thought so. My wife thought so. I thought so, too.

But there was more.

As it turned out, the picture was sort of a stocking stuffer—an hors d’oeuvre meant to whet the appetite for the main course to come. The girl pointed to the maroon blob just beneath the angel, which was not a blob at all. It was a special something packaged in a Tootsie-pop wrapper, held in place by a bit of Scotch tape. Then the girl grinned a big, toothy smile.

The teacher peeled the gift from its place beneath the angel, careful not to ball the tape, and unraveled the packaging. The girl shifted her weight from left to right. Stood on her tiptoes. Licked her lips. Kept smiling. If the teacher didn’t hurry up, she thought her student was going to explode with anticipation.

This was what she found inside:

A river rock. Worn smooth by time and polished by two tiny, patient hands.

Cheap, some would say. But not in my town. In my town, we know how hard things have gotten because things have always been that way. There isn’t a classroom in my wife’s school that doesn’t contain children who each day arrive in hand-me-downs so threadbare that they are nearly transparent. Children whose shoes are held together by duct tape. Who are given free lunches because their parents are too poor to feed their children or themselves.

And yet these children still come, every day. They still smile and laugh. They still give out of their hearts and their love, even if it is a rock.

I don’t know what that teacher got for Christmas. She has a husband and grown children who all earn livings. I’m sure she received quite a bit, and rightly so.

But I guarantee you that rock is her favorite of them all.

My favorite miracle

December 19, 2014 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Quick, tell me your favorite miracle.

Isn’t easy, is it? The Bible is full of them, after all—those sixty-six books of God’s revelation. It is history and theology, philosophy and poetry. From a strictly literary perspective, it’s some of the finest ever produced. And yet the Bible is especially a long collection of miracles, one strung after the other, spanning thousands of years.

So, which is your favorite?

Creation itself, perhaps. The parting of the Red Sea. Jesus feeding the five thousand. Lazarus raised.

Those are only a few, of course. The miracle that came to my mind was Christ’s first (or first recorded, at any rate), while attending a wedding at Cana. It isn’t my personal favorite, though I’ll say His turning water into wine holds a certain significance to me. I’ve felt felt that particular miracle was a bit different than all the others that came after. To me, this one was simply a son wanting to do something for his mother. There is a deep sense of humanity in that small but great act.

Here’s the thing about that miracle: it wasn’t simply that water was changed to wine, it was that something less was made into something more. That seems the general rule. So far as I can tell, miracles follow that pattern of less to greater.

Consider the examples I mentioned earlier. For all its mystery and grandeur, the miracle of creation can be boiled down to the “less” of nothing being transformed into the “more” of everything.

The parting of the Red Sea? Danger to safety.

It was hunger changed to fullness when Christ fed the five thousand.

It was death made into life when Lazarus walked out of his tomb.

That’s the way all miracles are. All but one.

We celebrate this time of year because it commemorates the birth of Christ. It is, to every Christian, a miracle. Think of that miracle in the most rational of terms—Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How—and you’ll find that within that miracle are many more.

Who was born? The Savior of the world.

What happened? An angel appeared to a group of shepherds, some of the poorest people in the world, who became the first witnesses of what had just occurred.

When? According to Paul, God sent forth his son “in the fullness of time.” A wonderful phrase, that. Meaning that it happened just when God meant it to happen, just as with all things.

Where? Bethlehem, so fulfilling a prophecy made centuries before.

Why? So death could become for us not an end, but a door.

How?

Ah, how.

How did all of this happen? I suppose it could only be best described as the miracle of miracles. Because in all the other times before and all the times since, something less was made more. But in this instance, something more was made less. God Himself became man. The all-powerful was changed to pink-skinned and frail.

Amazing, isn’t it? And yet I can think of no truer expression of love than that of a God so big squeezing Himself into a world so small. Of living alongside us and understanding the joys and pains of our short existence. Of dying so that we all may live.

That, friend, is why the birth of Christ is my favorite miracle.

And that is how I can wish you the most happiest of Christmases.