If there is a time you are going miss family, it is this time of year. Our children are grown and now live in three different states. Yet when they were living at home, we rarely ended up in church together, because my husband and I are both pastors. The one night we all showed up in the same place was Christmas Eve. On that night it was our family tradition to light the candles in the Advent wreath at the beginning of each of our services.
Two of our three children are extreme introverts and do not like being in front of groups. The other child, Will, has mental disabilities, autism, epilepsy and hyperactivity and does not handle crowds well. Yet, on Christmas Eve all three were troopers. They dressed up, divided the parts and traveled from one church service to the other, looking after their brother and grabbing supper between services.
I remember the year Will learned to blow out candles. Our routine had been to pass the lighter among us, each one saying a part and lighting a candle. Only that year each time a candle was lit, Will blew it out. Picture the other four of us, closing in around the wreath, talking fast and rapidly passing a lighter, racing against Will’s best efforts to blow. The Light had come into the world, and we were doing our best to keep Will from extinguishing it.
Years passed, our children grew and left home, two to college, one to a group home, but still we gathered to light candles on Christmas Eve. Then our daughter married, and she and her husband served as mission workers in an inner city ministry. December came, and as the newest worker at the shelter, our daughter drew Christmas Eve duty. For the first time, our family was separated on December 24. That year when my husband, I and our sons stood to light candles, there was an empty space, and our thoughts were with a loved one, far away in a cold, stark homeless shelter.
More years have brought more Christmas separations, time shared with in-laws, distant residences, sick grandchildren, and the advancement of our son’s disabilities. This year our children will spend Christmas in their own homes. It is, after all, time for them to develop their own family traditions. Yet when candles are lit on Christmas Eve, we will think of each other and remember.
Families change in many ways, but the message of Christmas is God’s presence does not. Distance or circumstance may separate us, but not from the Light that has come into the world. This Christmas Eve, alone or with family, light a candle.
The Rev. Wanda S. Neely is pastor of First Presbyterian Church. Reach her at wneely@fpckinston.com.