A Christmas Carol

Chapter Nine

             “Eight more minutes until midnight.”

             I looked eagerly at Noel as he held the church door open for me, gesturing for me to go before him. As I stepped out into the frosty air, I shivered. My thick black tights and sweater dress did little to block the suffocating cold from clinging to my body, even with the white pea coat  and knit infinity scarf I had over that. There were very few times that I dressed up, but the Christmas Eve church service that we attended as a family every year was mandatory. Of course, I didn’t have to go that year since my family wouldn’t be with me, but I wanted to. It was a tradition, and it felt wrong to skip out on tradition, even if I did receive several strange looks from regular church goers who recognized me there without my family that year.

             When I suggested it to Noel, I honestly didn’t expect for him to come. In fact, I completely understood if he didn’t want to come with me. However, he said he wanted to join. To be honest, that had really surprised me. I hadn’t ever pegged Noel as the kind of person who wanted to go to church, but maybe I had that wrong, too.

             Whatever the case, I was glad he had decided to come with me.

             The service was virtually the same thing every year, with a little deviation to the usual sermon to mix things up a bit. Of course, the lesson was always the same about how a virgin and a carpenter were sent by the angels to go into Bethlehem to have a baby who they would name Jesus. And then the baby was born one cold night, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger surrounded by barn animals in a stable. That baby would soon grow up to be Jesus the Messiah, who would defeat the odds of death by sacrificing his own life and save people from their sins.

             It was the same old story every year, but I never tired of hearing it. It was like a final reminder of what Christmas was really about. I always left feeling like I was truly prepared for the special holiday, filled to the brim with that glittering feeling known as the magic of Christmas, which I only then realized was the Holy Spirit inside of me.

             “You seem happy,” Noel commented, his eyes searching mine as we made our way out of the church parking lot. I craned my neck to look at him and smiled.

             “Yeah,” I agreed, thinking about Noel singing O Holy Night with everyone else in the church just an hour ago. No wonder I wasn’t as happy about Christmas as I usually was that year. I had completely lost sight of what it was all about for the first time in my life.  That year, I was more focused on being with my family and my relationship with Noel than the one who made Christmas possible. I realized that night, however, that Christmas wasn’t about me, or my family, or even Noel Henley. Christmas was about the birth of a baby who made it possible for sinners to experience life after death. It was about second chances and celebrating what we have, not what we want to receive wrapped up under the Christmas tree or having a boyfriend to cuddle with by the fire.

             People take Christmas and drag it in a hundred different directions, giving it all kinds of new meanings. But in reality, there is one central reason as to why we celebrate Christmas, and as a whole our generation has really lost sight of that meaning.

             I had been so focused on my thoughts, my eyes glued to the pavement two feet ahead of me, that I flailed in surprise when Noel suddenly grabbed me, which stopped me from walking any further. I shot him a what-on-earth-are-you-doing look, but he pointed up at the sky. My eyebrows scrunched in confusion but my gaze followed his finger when I saw it: a snowflake. And another. And another.

             It was snowing.

             At first, only a few snowflakes tumbled their way out of the dark abyss of clouds in the night sky but eventually a large multitude came fluttering down in fat flakes at increasingly impressive rates. The first snowfall of that winter.