From patagoniagifts.com

I am not dreaming of a white Christmas because I am sitting in Indiana and hoping to get home despite a canceled flight due to snow.

How’s this for irony? Indianapolis has snow, Charlotte (where I have to change planes) has snow, and Rochester is clear. How does one make sense of that?

Still, I am going to get home even if I have to walk 600 miles or–worse–take back many pronouncements I have made and fly through Chicago in the winter!

My son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter who are living in my house will have the tree trimmed and the stockings hung.

I always look forward to doing those things myself at the beginning of December, usually alone and quietly, as a way of entering the holiday season.

I hope I will be able to return to that routine next year when I am again living at home.

This will be an unusual Christmas. It is the first time for several years that there has not been a new member of the family.

Last year, we had tiny Caitlyn Bui, just two months old. The year before it was one-month old Isabella Quintero and Ethan Huynh.

Still, on Christmas Eve there will be seven children under nine years old, so it should be quite a scene.

My tree, a real tree, always has almost a mystical attraction for me. First, since I am not a plant guy except for a cactus a student gave me a few years ago, my Christmas tree is a rare piece of the outdoors brought inside. I like its color and its smell and the fact that I have to water it.

I need as big a tree as will fit in my house because I have innumerable ornaments. A few are family heirlooms, and a couple have ugly pink spray snow that my parents squirted the tree with one year when I was a kid.

Lots of the ornaments come from my travels. Although some were created as ornaments, others are ornaments by my decree.

I have some cotton balls that I picked from a field in the Mississippi Delta, a knitted guinea pig I bought in Cuzco, Peru, and a painted egg from Prague.

The events of my life are summed up in ornaments, from one of a blond chorister (I was a great boy soprano in my day) to one from each of the colleges that I have been associated with to one of the U.S. Capitol, which I never quite got to since I lost my bid for a seat in Congress eleven years ago.

There is an ornament for each one of my kids. Some have their names on them while others are more symbolic, for example a unicorn for Angel since he likes those one-horned creatures.

In recent years, the new family ornaments are for the grandkids. Last year I hung one that says “Montana Girl” since my newest granddaughter, Caitlyn, was born in Big Sky country and adopted at birth.

When I am in the living room alone in the evening, my eyes take a ‘tour’ of the tree, and I pause to remember or celebrate a certain person or moment.

Of course, there are ornaments that are just plain pretty. I am partial to bright colors and unusual shapes, and I buy almost any ornament I see that contains oak leaves or acorns since I live on Oak Street.

This year, I will add one that I purchased just a week ago in Aspen, Colo.; and I will remember three years of wonderful experiences there when I add it to my tree.

Interspersed with all of these ornaments are ones that celebrate the birth of the Messiah. There are angels swooping down from several branches–angels of different ethnicities and colors.

There are several ornaments that represent Jesus and Mary. One is from Haiti, and there is more than one from Italy.

Christmas, after all, is a universal event, and I don’t want all my images of Jesus to look like me because Jesus didn’t look like me. Still, I am fond of blond images of Jesus but also African and Asian and Native American one, and they all grace my tree.

The only thing better than wandering around my tree is wandering around my tree with Christmas music playing. I am partial to traditional carols and the Christmas parts of Handel’s “Messiah.”

I have my own favorite carol, “Once in Royal David’s City,” which I sang as a solo in church when I was a boy soprano. However, I also have Christmas music from many cultures. In some cases, these are traditional carols sung in a wide variety of languages. “Silent Night” sounds quite different in Vietnamese.

I especially love African renditions of Christmas music, whether it is the Boys Choir of Harlem or a selection from my “Reggae Christmas” CD.

I was once in an African American Baptist church in the Mississippi Delta and heard the most moving version of “Silent Night” I had ever encountered. It was quite different from that first singing of “Stille Nacht” in Austria almost 200 years ago, but it was equally glorious.

For me, the celebration of Christmas is both intensely personal and at the same time universal. I have “my things” and “my tunes” and of course my family. But what is so personal is also a celebration of an event of cosmic importance.

By having my family memories blended with traditions from around the world, I can celebrate Christmas fully.

A great theologian said that perhaps the way God wants us to love the world is to love some little piece of it intensely.

Oh, how I love my kids and grandkids. But when I love them surrounded by signs of the universality of Christ’s love for all people and indeed all creatures, I think that somehow I can best experience that event so long ago and so far away.

¡Feliz Navidad!