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December 24, 2002

Descended From a Miracle

It happens that Christmas Eve is my birthday. People often assume that’s a problem, that my “special day” gets lost in the seasonal surge. On the contrary, I’ve always enjoyed the association. It seems to me I get more attention, rather than less, owing to the general concentration of celebration.

Anyone’s birthday is a special day, at least to them. Mine is caught up in our biggest Holiday, replete with images and evocations of nativity. Christmas is a heady occasion, no doubt, but I’ve come to realize that I can’t really separate it from my own birthday. I suppose that some part of what I understand as the “Holiday Spirit” is actually what other people feel on their birthdays, whenever they occur. Allowing us to identify with divinity is a proper function of Christmas, but for most of the year we are merely born, in the conventional manner.
Such as that may be.

We know our parents, and who their parents were, but beyond that it’s hearsay fading to ignorance. Surely the line had a beginning? There was a time before there were people, and a time before there was life. Perhaps there was a time before there was anything, if you can call that time. Even the most mundane explanation of how it is that we are here now passes for miraculous. Somewhere in our ancestry we require that there be something out of nothing.

Something out of nothing is a Mystery.
Hence Christmas, with it’s unaccountable Birth.
But mine, and yours, are no less miraculous.
And that, too, is the lesson of Christmas.
It’s everybody’s Birthday.

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