Gerard...I'm about to enter a Christmas frenzy of over 30 guests and a harried hostess (my niece, when did she grow up?). I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for a great year and to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas.

Terry

Whatever else it is, this time is also a celebration. Of course people are going to go large a bit.

We do that when we celebrate. Go large. We dance, we sing, we make babies on the dinning room table a half hour before Christmas dinner. When we celebrate we don't take half measures.

And God forbid we ever behave properly during a celebration. For joy must needs be expressed, and better honest fornication than dishonest shows of piety.

Sir, I say celebrate and celebrate load. God can hear you no matter how quiet you are, it's the neighbors who need the message.

Enjoyed this the first time...

Enjoyed it more this time...

You're a craftsman with words sir and I love reading your product...

Merry Christmas to you and yours, belatedly (but not really)...

Great meditation.

And, you are such a wonderful writer..

Merry Christmas, Susan Lee

I read the essay first, and then noticed the quotation from Kierkegaard resting above ~ "A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either."

Indeed. And if the hope is to seduce with words, to entice into moments of new perception, curiosity, appreciation and amazement, you have done it well.

This is an essay to re-read in the coming days. Thank you.

A great read, as always. I think the majority of us have lost the spirit and meaning of Christmas, or the various "Holidays" around this time of year. You are an exception to the rule, I like to think I am as well, although I'm not nearly as eloquent in the telling. And the mystery of that nativity should never be uncovered, it would lose something in the revelation.

I read this in the dark days of 2005 in Germany and it was the first thing of yours I had ever read. Whenever I describe your blog to others, this essay is the first thing that comes to mind.

This and the "Not Insane To-Do List" I carry in my planner now.

I love your writing.

Did you ever get to see the lone nativity again?

Have a blessed Christmas.

sehoy-chris

Thank you for your kind words.

To answer your question, yes I did.

The next year it was still there.

Loved the writing. Thank you for sharing this. A great Christmas story. I am wondering if anyone will ever see the lone nativity scene again. Am in hopes that they will. The political climate we presently live in leaves me in doubt.

Sustenance for my spirit during the season when the Light is re-born, if we can only bear it.

The warmth of home and hearth to you.
The Light of the Christmas Star to you.

A good story is always worth the retelling.

After all, the primary story of the season has been retold for two thousand years.

A blessed Christmas to you and yours.

I recently had the pleasure of driving from Seattle to La Paz, nearly at the tip of the Baja penninsula. Your piece reminds me of the hundreds of small shrines to accident victims I saw along the way, and some not so small at all, as if marking some tragic bus wreck.

Going north from LA, you are travelling into the heart of American agribusiness, at leat until you get to the "Congress-created dustbowl" of the San Joacquin valley.

Travelling the other way, a day beyond the tawdry border, you may think yourself on Mars. Boojum trees, volcanos, fields of boulders the size of ships (BIG ships), and a new breed of cactus dominant every few miles.

You drive a two lane road that goes the equivalent distance from LA to Seattle, cutting back and forth across the penninsula to check into the widely-spaced little seaside towns, and finally a descent into the lovely Bay of La Paz, and if you are lucky enough to be me, a refuge away from home.

Sounds like a wonderful drive, Gerard.

Hmm, well, regarding the creche, it is probably on private property, paid for with private funds... Last time I checked, the ACLU had no beef with that. Of course, some idiots can't quite get the distinction between private expression of religion (good) and public (government) establishment of religion (really, not so good...). But I guess that's one of the things that makes them idiots...

I remember the original Grapevine. We traveled it every summer, from the time I was 6 until I was 14, as we made our annual trip to Yosemite to camp for 2 weeks. It was a treacherous road back then. Not so much, these days. Well, except for that time back in the summer of 2000, when there was a semi in front of me, a semi in back of me, a semi on my right, and the semi on my left decided to pull over. Okay, there was an escape slot, if I had been in a small, powerful car. None whatsoever for me, in my pick-up, pulling a horse trailer with a 1200 lb. horse in it. Going uphill, no acceleration possible, even with my powerful diesel, I had to edge to the right, hoping the trucker would get a clue. My daughter yelled, "Mommy, Mommy, you're gonna hit the other truck!" She meant the one on my right, the one she could have touched if her window had been down. I cannot remember how it resolved, but we came through it unscathed. No creche on a hillside, just the hand of God.

I was waiting for you to post this one again. Thank you.

Words have magic. And you sir, are a wizard. A very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and the Happiest of New Years.

I've been waiting and hoping you would run this once again. A fine story, well told. Im pleased you are still around to tell it once again. Here's hoping I'll be reading it many years to come. Thanks from Kansas City.

It is funny how I read through the comments and I find that I've already said what I was going to say.

Thank you, Gerard, for taking the time to express yourself so beautifully. I comment infrequently, but stop by every day for a dose of wit and wisdom.

Wishing you and your family a blessed Christmas and to you especially, much health and happiness in the new year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It is, indeed, good writing, definitely. Thanks.

But the problem is when government spends money on any certain religion's images, etc., as surely you know and recognize.

Anyone can have their religion, sure, but when a government spends money on one, it must then spend that same on all, be it Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Zen, Zoroastran, B'hai, etc., etc.

Most Americans couldn't handle that.

Happy holidays.

Christmas feels different this year to me. I don't know about anyone else, but there is a kind of looking forward and not seeing the same kind of Christmases in the future as we have had in the past. It's been a relentless war of nastiness against the creche, no matter where it's stationed. Perhaps that's too pessimistic. On the other hand, seeing what the other side has to offer, which is nothing and a whole lot of it with hatred, makes the nativity far more desirable than just about anything else.

Yes, I think we're all familiar with the Establishment Clause at this point. And I also think I can state with great confidence that regulating religious statuary on publicly-maintained land and the other sorts of cases involving said clause that are most likely to see the inside of a courtroom these days were, if even on James Madison's, the First Congress', and the state legislators' minds at all, either the last things or you could see them from there.

re. LA lights. In the early '70s I was flying Convair 440s in and out of LAX. Inbound from the east at night approaching Palm Springs at 6000' or 8000', you were nearly blinded by the bright white light of the LA basin. You had to turn up the cockpit lights to cope with it. At about this time of year the light was strongly tinted an orangish red. The first year I saw this I told the crew there must be a helluva fire in LA, maybe it's been nuked. I soon learned it was just the glare of the jillions of Christmas lights Angelinos string around and on their houses at Christmas time.

Gerard,

I was coming back up north from the CIF state championship at the Stubhub center. I entered the LA side of the grapevine around 5:30AM and there it was off to my side to the right. The manger! All lit up. I thought about you when you mentioned this a couple of years back. I was very tempted to pull over and take a Photo of it, but that would have been very unsafe. Merry Christmas!

Tom

You're right. Thatwould have been most unsafe. Most unsafe. But I am pleased it is still going and going and going and going.....

That picture appears similar to the view driving into Palm Springs from HWY 74.

I never tire of this one. Merry Christmas Gerard.

Gerard, thank you again for this essay. I am warmed each time I read it through the years.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Herb

Poor Jesus, must be spinning in his grave wondering just what the f*** we think we are doing.