As a child I remember riding the two short miles to the rural church of St. Patrick’s for Christmas Eve Mass with my forehead pressed against the cold, hard car window.  I was scanning the starry sky for the streak that would represent Santa Claus coming to carpet bomb my parents’ living room with presents.  The next morning, in each wrapped mystery, I expected to find a happiness I had not known before.

Those days are past me now, and even if they weren’t, I have no desire to keep such ambitious anticipation of the presents of Christmas from its rightful heirs.  Anymore,  I think of the gifts that presented themselves all the other days of the year, and how for most of them I never got around to even getting the wrapping off.  Sometimes what keeps us from opening these isn’t a lack of that ambitious anticipation, but excuses made of more fiction than the jolly fat man in the red suit ever was.  Perhaps peeling that back is a small part of what Christmas is supposed to be about in the first place.

This Christmas, if you need to, may you unwrap a few of those.