Lingering light is not something we find here in the PNW this time of year. But like most things that are in abeyance, it makes their value all that much higher, and one begins to find the metaphor of watching for the light all the more powerful. The memories have come back to me this year, that this weather, this light, is a pattern I knew as a young boy growing up in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
My favorite Christmas memory is reawakened as I sit here beneath a layer of fog clinging to the evergreens, muting the sounds of the geese flying over and sharpening the sound of the birds of prey sitting on low branches, their keen eyes working the harder to see through the shroud. The past two years here have given us white Christmases, which we were told are rather unusual. Indeed, this year, we are told, is much more seasonal with temperatures in the 40’s and rain in the forecast.
In the suburbs of Chicago, in the 1970’s, Christmas was clockwork magic. At the same time every year, the cold would descend, snow would fall (O.K., not always but most of the time…) and the neighborhoods and downtown Palatine would light up with Christmas lights, creche scenes, greenery and scarves, hats, coats and smiling faces. I remember playing outside with my brother and our neighborhood friends. I remember watching as the sun began to sink, and lights would come on, flickering against the snow and lighting our way.
My deepest memory of Chicago at Christmas is the animatronic displays in the shop windows on State Street. I have clear memories of my mom driving my brothers and I into the city on Friday nights where we would meet dad, who’d taken the train to work. In temperatures that dipped into single digits, we would walk along and see the displays with Santa and Mrs. Claus, reindeer, elves and various scenes of the Holiday. It’s still there, though certainly it has changed over the years. We’d then huddle into an Italian restaurant whose name I forget, but whose mostaccioli was my favorite thing as a kid. As far as I know, I’ve no Italian blood, but I want to be adopted by a band of Italian chefs and winemakers. Yes, even today.
Those lights along State Street and Michigan Avenue were a high watermark for me. The memory is one of winter nights, and so the ambient light around us is subdued, but then, a turn onto the street with the window displays and suddenly, we’re squinting and delighted by the Christmas and winter images afoot. Candle light in the restaurant adds to the contrast of a hot meal warming us up and preparing us for a plunge back out into the winter night, bundled in our heavy coats, hats and mittens, even a scarf on occasion— and a ride back home.
It occurs to me that all my life I’ve been searching for that quality of light again. In Southern California, for the most part, light is not hard to come by even in December. But even there, we began setting up our Christmas decorations and on our first Christmas as a married couple, Sue and I began collecting a Dept. 56 Dickens Village. Sue even enjoyed collecting them for a while, though she knew it was something about which I was perhaps, more passionate. My own personal affection for A Christmas Carol is well known in our family, and I’ve happily shared the mania with my daughter who has already claimed the Dickens Village for an inheritance. She began setting it up when she was old enough to do so and most years, she still does it. The village lit up at night against the white felt “snowfall,” mimics that deep winter light that Dickens captures in Stave I, “…candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears…”
Now, here in Northwest Washington, that quality of light is back with me. It’s become something of an old friend and that was unexpected for me. When we moved here, I bought a bright “happy light,” or “therapy lamp,” because I knew that the winter months would be so much darker than I was used to, but here in my third winter in the north, I’ve never used it. I welcome the roll of seasons, and the darkness of winter doesn’t have a negative impact. In fact, it leaves me more intensely happy in some ways, certainly around Christmas.
So, I look for light in the places, that perhaps, I was meant to in the first place like in my memories of Michael and Phyllis and their Hannukah candles that are now a real blessing for me. And living here now has allowed me to, perhaps quite literally, rekindle that quality of light that I knew as a child, flickering just in the distance offering a reminder of hope and joy, peace and love. It seems a veritable replica of Advent that calls me both back to my childhood, and forward to a Savior’s birth and a reason for the intense happiness, wrapped in the warmth, comfort and closeness of my family, flickering candles aglow again, and flaring in the windows.
Merry Christmas.