It's Christmas Eve, except it's midnight, which according to people who pay very close attention to numbers and clocks means it's Christmas Day. I'm not one of these people. It isn't Christmas Day until the sun rises or I wake up from a good sleep. That's when today becomes tomorrow, and no sooner.
Legend has it that Jesus was born at the stroke of midnight, and now, all these years later, the supernatural shockwave of that event causes farm animals and households pets to gain the power of speech right around this time. My cat, Pancake, isn't talking to me (yet). A quick Google search tells me that this story may have emerged from an old belief that the animals in the stable bowed down to their infant king after the virgin birth. Some say that on this night mis-treated pets take vengeance on their cruel masters (uh, Pancake?) and others say that animals become able to foretell the deaths of their owners. According to a cartoon from the 1970s called "The Night the Animals Talked," on the first Christmas goats and cows and lambs and other livestock began to spread the word of the miraculous birth of Jesus (this is not considered part of the biblical canon). New England folklore has it that bees assemble and hum Christmas carols.
I have not witnessed anything like all this tonight, though earlier today my cat finally warmed up to my girlfriend and I consider this a small Christmas miracle.
But this is not a post about animals, and I'm not going to stay up much longer, so let me get right to the point (that doesn't happen often here). It's Christmas (I'm conceding the point for the purpose of this conclusion). This is the night we remember how God dressed down, put on flesh, put his feet on the planet and redeemed all things that feel, cry, eat, hate, kiss, smell, and all the rest. The Creator, here, getting to work setting things right, though I'm not exactly sure how he set things right.
"I only know it is, I know not how or why."
Wisdom and love, love growing under wisdom - the Great Spirit, God, g-d, doing something wild, paradoxical, maybe ironic, and fearless. Though Jesus probably did get afraid from time to time. I'm sure his mother did. I don't often feel like I'm living on a planet that God's ever really visited (then again, miserable things happened while he was here, to him even, the stories don't deny this). But with my candles burning and the snow piling up and my city so very quiet, I can come up with a picture of what that might feel like. Stillness and peace, peace growing under stillness.
I want to share with you a passage I found tonight while reading through an old collection of Thoreau's works, this from a section called "Love."
"There is at first thought something trivial in the commonness of love. So many Indian youths and maidens along these banks have in ages past yielded to the influence of this great civilizer. Nevertheless, this generation is not disgusted nor discouraged, for love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal; and the same divine influence broods over these banks, whatever race may inhabit them, and perchance still would, even if the human race did not dwell here."
My cat still hasn't said a word to me, save for a few squeaks, but she's taken the last couple of minutes to curl up on my lap and is now happily stretched out over my arms. Thoreau has some good words about love, but it's nothing a purring cat can't tell you. I've long appreciated the earthiness of the Gospel stories, how Jesus doesn't wave a wand or cast spells, but spits in the mud, draws in the dirt, hugs, touches, and puts his hands on people. A pilgrim I know once said that this world is charged with "divine electricity." Earth is the place where the finite and the infinite collide. And sometimes it causes freaky things to happen, like old-fashioned repentance and talking animals.
Advent is over. Christmas is here. Thanks for reading, Holy Landers.
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