When The Tree Lights Sing

Our house has been loud with love these last few weeks of December, but tonight, as the little’s sleep after a wild day of excitement,  the quiet of the tree calls to me. I’ve felt it drawing me now for weeks but the frantic rush has made it nigh impossible to just… sit.

The children’s Christmas concerts always make the heart swell.  Those choirs of youthful voices, that sea of tiny faces.  We can always count on that baby girl that lifts her dress in excitement and mortifies her mother and the little guy who takes out the other kid in the back row.  And is it just me or are those traditional and even newer Christmas songs just an absolute emotional roller coaster ride after having put a bit of life under your belt? We bake up all our favorites, and decorate with such extravagance that in a few short weeks our insides are screaming  “take it down!”  Oh that first snow fall, I’m sorry, it’s mine, it has been since the day I was born.  Those magical flakes, that “snow’s coming” smell, that snow globe effect on my everyday. We scour the  malls for hours looking for a tangible expression of the feelings we struggle to articulate all year long, right or wrong, and we fall in love a bit more with our downtown’s, their brick facades twinkling on a snowy night.

So the little’s have fallen asleep, the dishes are washed and put away, toys are strewn all over the living room floor, and the lights on the tree twinkle tonight and ask bigger questions. “What is that inexplicable draw, that  inner desire to meet and spend “real” time with the ones we love in those few weeks around Christmas? Why do we ‘wake up’  each Christmas to the desperate need we have for connection, real love and acceptance?

I’ve felt it since I was a child, in the silence of the tree, when the business, the loudness of love, comes to an extreme halt for a moment. It is because the lights are strung, the ornaments are hung, the ribbon unfurled, the perfect star placed and the boxes tucked back away. It is there, in the silence of the tree, house lights dimmed, that the angels sing.  I know it is them, I’ve always known, they are undeniable. You must wait for it, I must wait for it every year or it will be missed.  It is here that my soul cries for my heart’s anguish this past year and for the hope that rises despite it. It is here that my soul speaks loudly, pleads with me to live differently, to love differently. It is here that I am keenly aware that hope came to earth, hope came to me, hope came FOR me even, in the form of a baby who was the perfect son of God. It is here that my soul is drawn back to my maker in a moment of quiet worship. And so, the tree lights sing.