Receiving love so brimful, when the children become Santa.

Sneaking out to tuck presents underneath the tree of friends on Christmas Eve, in our Christmas dresses, alone on the dark cold road, and Ry's impossibly sweet voice from the backseat, "Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o're the plains and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains..."   Finding the door unlocked makes it easy to break in.  We giggled our way back home, passing the church where we knew they were joyously singing.  

Standing at the barnyard gate the next morning, the cow has to be milked even on Christmas.  Looking  into the eyes of a man in his seventies hearing about the very moment Christmas arrived for him.  "And Christmas means all of this, the ducks here, you milking in the barn, my many children scattered all over the country, just everything, I tell you, the woman in front of me in church last night when her voice soared above us all.  Christmas is all of it, I tell you."  Then looking off politely as he brushed away a few tears, the top rail cold on our arms, the mist lifting off the pond, the heron moving over the water, the geese crying glory. 

Holding now, instead of unholy drama, something dear and quiet and real.