The Spirit of Christmas Past

A tag-team tale of how the Spirit moves us

Credit: Cori Bren. This trailside detritus made a perfect Christmas card for 2024.

This is a tale of two lives, thousands of miles and seemingly light years apart. We met on Substack with like minds and hearts gifted to God. In this story Wendy Elizabeth Williams and I share our spiritual beginnings through Christmas and family spiritual traditions. We hope you find the spark of a guiding star in your sacred season this year.

Silent Night - by Cori Bren

When I was a kid, we had no ‘normal’. My parents fought like cats and dogs, sometimes with fists. We were in and out of different houses and often spent long periods living with relatives. Sometimes, the 6 of us kids were split up at different houses between my father’s and mother’s families. I don’t have very many clear memories of those earlier days. But the Christmas holiday was always magical.

Of course there was cookie baking, sand tarts back then. We always trudged to the woods to cut our own Christmas tree, for which my dad directed the decorating crew. Big chunky lights, tinsel, lead glass ornaments and icicles. My mom had a white pasteboard village with several houses and a church, that she carefully placed under the tree. I do remember lying on my stomach on the floor staring at the lights in the houses and church, poked through a hole in the back of the pasteboard. The lights shone through the colored plastic-wrap windows and down from the tree above, causing the ‘glitter snow’ paint to sparkle and shine. There was also an electric train placed in an oval around the village. It seemed a perfect ‘Whoville’ in miniature. On Christmas eve we received matching pajamas and always a picture was snapped to preserve the memory.

Sometimes our Christmas was grand, other times modest, and other times non-existent. Some of the happiest times I remember were in Pine Glen. This was a small village with it’s own elementary school and white clapboard Methodist Church. In this church I became a Christian at 3 or 4 years old when I thought an angel visited right next to the pastor, in front of the choir. Something stirred and I never looked back. I remember that during the holiday season there were modest gifts in Sunday school - boxes that looked like books and inside were rolls of Lifesaver candies. It felt like we got diamonds, but it was just a little something.

When we were older, after our mom died, we lived in another small town where there was a Catholic church. We weren’t members, but I remember one particularly snowy Christmas when we trudged down our street and up the hill to that church for Christmas Eve midnight mass. No one else was walking to mass, but we did because my dad wanted nothing to do with church and didn’t drive us. The snow was pristine, no footprints and no traffic on our route because the cars came to the church from above where we were. It was an absolutely silent night, the kind of silence that caused the air to hum in our ears. It looked like a scene from a snow globe. Such still and silent perfection; it’s never left my mind.

The last family home I lived in was a rental on a farm. We helped the farmer with free labor and in exchange he didn’t kick us out of that house when my dad was slow with the rent. It was the most stable place we lived besides Pine Glen. There was a small church there too, right at the end of our road. What I appreciated living there, besides a secure home, was that church family knew who wasn’t quite making it from paycheck to paycheck and they passed out holiday food boxes. Everything necessary for a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner, left on our doorstep and SO appreciated. Such a small gesture, like the lifesavers, to make the season bright and remind us that we were loved, cared for, and even fed in a way that Americans were accustomed to with their family and friends. People considered it charity, but I knew it as God’s blessings at work in the real world with real people.

It seems like over the years Christmas has become so commercialized. Kids get so much stuff none of it means a thing. When they’re almost 60 like I am now, they won’t remember the stuff. What they will remember are the moments - matching Christmas eve pj’s, getting a tree, taking/or receiving a box as a neighbor in need, listening to midnight mass, feeling angels in their little church. I don’t see the commercialization of Christmas that others do. I had so many Christmases after mom died with no gifts, but they were almost as magical as when we had them. We momentarily felt forgotten or left behind but we we still had each other. There was always a tree and family and music and snow and…that’s the Holy Spirit ensuring that we pass these spiritual memories on through traditions of our own. Traditions that allow us to touch God and feel the magic that became tangible when His son was born on earth.

THE ANCHOR OF CHRISTMAS - by Wendy Elizabeth Williams

A foundation through the crucible

Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be in his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, the The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

Growing up, while I had a warm roof in a cold climate, food on the table, a bed to sleep in and parental protection, I still had no clue how the world worked. Things like where money came from, how social order was maintained, how to live in the world, I was utterly unknowing. My world was tiny, mainly focused mainly on my Mom, who brought me to God and His Son in my young childhood. God provided when I did not know He was doing this. God is our Heavenly Father!

Toward the end of my grade school years, I was standing one evening in early December, astride the wonderful living room floor heater, basking in the warmth of home even in the core of Winter.

The living room lights were off and only the Christmas tree was illuminated. Shimmering in the magical darkness, the tree lights and tinsel glowed in a happy vision of presents to open and treats to eat!

My Mom and I loved the foundational presence of Christmas month, December. We shared the tender fellowship of decorating the house day by day and this lives so clearly in my heart.

Then close to my 8th grade year, the crucible of the world hit and my grounding was shattered. Parents marriage broke apart, Mom and I moved out, Dad filed for divorce and Mom soon dropped dead overnight of a massive stroke. Cast adrift, I moved back in with Dad who did not mistreat me but did not want this troubled sorrowful daughter. I stumbled through high school, dazed and terribly lost. One brother was killed in Vietnam two years later in 1968.

Grief and rebellion followed me through my adult life, including 35 years as a Prodigal from my Christian faith.

Not once was I ever hungry, cold or without shelter. I had no violence aimed at me, despite the stupid decisions I made. Despite my grief that shadowed me for decades, God still knew me and relentlessly called me back to Him. I never did know the Good Shepherd was relentlessly calling me back to the Household of God! God's ways are mysterious but they do shine through even in darkness. Even through the "crucible" years of rebellion, God never once left me. I had the basics, always and even felt God near me from time to time, despite my stoned and rebellious state! I just was not ready to allow Him back in...

Perhaps the intensity of the Christmas season is that the story of God coming to Earth as Christ, simply overwhelms our cranky hearts. We cannot intellectually comprehend this! We have never known a God like Him! He actually came down from Heaven in the form of a helpless baby, allowing Himself to be vulnerable to the gnarly creatures He created, to pour such love on each of us, whether we even regard Him with any respect or allow Him into our homes, much less our hearts. The ritual events of Christmas, the surface stuff of gifts, trees, decor, food, parties, keeps so many from the core of the meaning of Christ's birth. The strength of the tender memories from so long ago still sustains me, even though my life has had many difficulties in 72 years. I still remember the magic of that night standing over the floor heater, seeing the tree lights and the shining tinsel and the Christmas carols on the radio. Despite my cynicism and my unwise decisions...the helpless baby born in that stable still resides in my heart. I remain profoundly grateful that I returned to my roots of faith in God and His Son. There is nothing more honorable than them! Steady provision despite the mistakes I made, the immense love, the calling me back for so many years...the mercy and forgiveness...there is no God like Him.

We hope and pray you’re touched by the Holy Spirit this holiday season of 2024. May all the blessings of a kind, loving, generous God be with you as you walk your streets enjoying a soft and silent night of your own.

Wendy and I would love to hear from you about this post. Please join the chatter by leaving a comment.

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