December 29: Trains
I got a train set for Christmas when I was five. It was a simple thing, one smallish circle, the train going round and round. Still, it captivated my attention for hours. I have no idea where the Train-around-the-Christmas-tree tradition comes from, but since then, I've longed to have one.
Two years ago, on Christmas Eve after all the presents were chosen and wrapped, I impulsively ended up in the rather creepy basement of our local hardware store where ancient, dusty toys are displayed in wobbly, disorderly stacks.
I found a Christmas train and bought it. Nobody was more excited about it on Christmas morning than me.
This year, in one of the giant black trash bags of gifts that our foster son received, was an even bigger, better Christmas train. So, now we have two. And our foster son loves, loves, loves them both, to my great delight. He has set at least one of them up (and put it back in the box) every day. It's going to be hard for me, admittedly, to put them away when the season is over.
The one and only connection I can make between toy trains and Christmas is that they go around in a circle, repeating themselves, just like the story itself, which returns year after year, delighting us all over again each time.
Also, the season is about going somewhere else--either literally traveling to see family and friends or moving out of one year and into another, whatever actual or symbolic meaning that transition has for us. But it is also about returning to where we began--literally, to birth itself.
Last night I let myself build and run the train--on my own, after everyone was asleep. I know, it's a little weird. But I used the circular motion of the train, the delightful small details (Santa crossing signs, tiny tinsel on the caboose, the little elf turning the wheel of the engine) that kept returning, to move my heart from exhaustion into joy, to move out of the too-much-to-think-about to the very particular sound and sight of that train circling again and again.
The story comes back. The manger sits empty again, then the baby is laid there, then there are angels and wise men and a mother singing about justice and peace and reversal year after year.
In these sacred days of Christmas between the birth and the Epiphany, let us allow the story to work on us. Let us take time to delight in its repetition--but also to notice details we hadn't before, new nuances we may never have thought about. Let us really be there, in the temple with Zechariah, at the Annunciation, in the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, in the trip to Bethlehem, with the innkeeper, the shepherds, the Magi who chose to take a different way home.
Two years ago, on Christmas Eve after all the presents were chosen and wrapped, I impulsively ended up in the rather creepy basement of our local hardware store where ancient, dusty toys are displayed in wobbly, disorderly stacks.
I found a Christmas train and bought it. Nobody was more excited about it on Christmas morning than me.
This year, in one of the giant black trash bags of gifts that our foster son received, was an even bigger, better Christmas train. So, now we have two. And our foster son loves, loves, loves them both, to my great delight. He has set at least one of them up (and put it back in the box) every day. It's going to be hard for me, admittedly, to put them away when the season is over.
The one and only connection I can make between toy trains and Christmas is that they go around in a circle, repeating themselves, just like the story itself, which returns year after year, delighting us all over again each time.
Also, the season is about going somewhere else--either literally traveling to see family and friends or moving out of one year and into another, whatever actual or symbolic meaning that transition has for us. But it is also about returning to where we began--literally, to birth itself.
Last night I let myself build and run the train--on my own, after everyone was asleep. I know, it's a little weird. But I used the circular motion of the train, the delightful small details (Santa crossing signs, tiny tinsel on the caboose, the little elf turning the wheel of the engine) that kept returning, to move my heart from exhaustion into joy, to move out of the too-much-to-think-about to the very particular sound and sight of that train circling again and again.
The story comes back. The manger sits empty again, then the baby is laid there, then there are angels and wise men and a mother singing about justice and peace and reversal year after year.
In these sacred days of Christmas between the birth and the Epiphany, let us allow the story to work on us. Let us take time to delight in its repetition--but also to notice details we hadn't before, new nuances we may never have thought about. Let us really be there, in the temple with Zechariah, at the Annunciation, in the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, in the trip to Bethlehem, with the innkeeper, the shepherds, the Magi who chose to take a different way home.
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