Roby’s first Christmas is tomorrow. She won’t really know what’s going on, but I think she’ll know that the house is full of people that love her, and it’s full of them, because they love her. We’re all coming together here, for her. She might not understand all that, that this Christmas is about her, but she’ll know it, somehow. Next Christmas will be about her too. She’ll be too young to talk, but I think she’ll be old enough to love her gifts and to hug people she loves, and that’ll be more than enough. Jack and Elena’s kid’ll be there, too. That’ll be nice. And who knows who elses’ kids’ll show up by then. Roby wasn’t concieved until a little over a week after Christmas last year.

The belief that God came to Earth a poor child in the wintertime says a great deal, and it says it with a voice I’m quite sure I could not have understood before Roby was born, or before the cold of this winter. 

I feel very lucky to be writing this from a warm office, adjacent to a warm bedroom where Abby and Roby sleep, next to a kitchen where Roby’s Grandparents are graciously cleaning up after a delicious supper before a great big party witih loads of delicious food. Even our chickens are laying eggs in their cozy, if smelly, coop, and our dogs snooze greedily by the fire. 

Life’s good, unspeakably good. It’s possible it’s so good that I’m missing out on a level of insight and humanity I can’t even concieve of. 

I’ve been speaking with people about the importance of knowing the difference between pleasure and goodness, and being able to find pleasure in goodness, and not the other way around. Following that idea gives a fair bit of insight into why Christ might’ve been born in a manger to refugee parents in fear for their lives, I think. Why that might be so valid a human experience far above somebody like Siddartha who had to throw it all away. 

Siddartha never celebrated Christmas, anyway.