Christmas Eve Magic

Soul Collage – “Christmas Eve”

I remember when I was a child, Christmas Eve was magic. Our family tradition was to drive around to look at the lights in a nearby neighborhood, which just happened to have Santa Claus (on his busiest night of the year) sitting in a sleigh in someone’s yard, taking last-minute requests. Then we would go home, where I would fall asleep listening to the one radio station playing all-night Christmas music because I didn’t want the magic on this most magical night of the year to end. I would be startled from my reverie by the sound of jingling bells just outside my bedroom window accompanied by a booming “Ho ho ho!” I didn’t know it at the time, but this was my dad’s way of making sure I was asleep so that he and mom could complete their part in the magic and get some sleep themselves. It worked, and it always made for some interesting breakfast conversation on Christmas morning. 

I was always the kid whose eyes started to tear up in that last scene of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” when Santa’s sleigh is flying away on its mission with the full moon as a backdrop. Proof that there was magic in the world.

As I got older, I always wanted to recapture that feeling. I began to realize that the idea that there is a God, an ultimate force of love and logic in the universe who would choose to express itself in the form of a simple child born in the poorest of circumstances, was indeed magic, a miracle beyond human comprehension. I still fell asleep listening to Christmas music on my radio, but my dreams of Santa had been replaced by my awe and wonder of this child.

Living in New Mexico with its rich traditions, many of them dating back centuries, brought me an entirely new experience of magic. On Christmas Eve, my Spanish landlord, Tony Cordova, would pull up in his pickup, the back of it filled with sand, small paper bags, and white votive candles. He and his family proceeded to line the dirt road and the top of the adobe wall in front of the house with farolitos, paper bags filled with sand to anchor them, and a candle placed inside. At dusk, each candle was lit, forming a lantern path of soft light on our road to light the Christ Child’s way on Christmas Eve. My husband’s family was visiting, and we helped. It was cold. It was fun. It was magic. On Christmas morning, we all crammed into my husband’s Dodge Aspen and drove to Zia Pueblo, where we watched the Native American community celebrate with the Buffalo Dance. It was freezing, but I was mesmerized as I felt the rhythm of the drumbeat and the dancers and the singers as they danced this beautiful community prayer for a successful hunting season. Someday I am going to see the midnight procession of the Virgin Mary and bonfires of Taos Pueblo. It’s on my bucket list.

Another magical Christmas in New Mexico found my husband and I driving to the tiny town of Chimayo for Christmas Eve dinner. Each little house along the country road had luminarias, small bonfires, burning in the yard. We dined by candlelight in an old hacienda. I remember the green chili stuffed pork chops and the caramel flan and the red chile pepper lights strung through the evergreen branches surrounding the kiva fireplace. Then we returned to Santa Fe to join the Christmas Eve stroll along Canyon Road, the same little fires lit at intervals for people to stop and warm themselves while they sang Christmas carols. The adobe homes along the road were lined with paper bag farolitos. To this day, I feel more Christmas spirit from these soft, simple lights than I do the most elaborate Christmas light display. I make my own and light them on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

My favorite Christmas program as an adult is an episode of the 90’s tv show Northern Exposure, a show that was 20 years ahead of its time. The episode is called “Seoul-Mates” and won an Emmy for writing. The entire episode can be found on You Tube if you search “Northern Exposure Seoul Mates.” It takes place in the fictional small town of Cicely, Alaska, a tight-night community composed of quirky characters where everyone belongs. The episode centers around the different forms of celebration that Christmas takes for each of the characters and finds beauty in each of them. Shelly, a young waitress at the local bar, longs for a candlelit Catholic midnight mass like she attended in her childhood. Ruth Ann, who runs the general store, is an atheist who can’t bear the thought of chopping down a tree and letting it die in her living room. Dr. Fleischman, the town’s Jewish doctor from New York, contemplates the idea of putting up a Christmas tree. Maggie O’Connell, a bush pilot, dreads the idea of going home to Michigan for Christmas so much that she becomes accident-prone in an effort to avoid the trip. Marilyn Whirlwind, a Native American woman-of-few-words who is Dr. Fleischman’s receptionist, tells him the story of The Raven that is performed in the town’s annual Christmas pageant. Chris, the local philosophical DJ, recounts waiting as a child for midnight to arrive on Christmas Eve to see if his dog, Buddy, would talk. And Maurice Minnefield, a former astronaut and the town’s richest man, is surprised when he is visited by the Korean son he never knew he had who wants to meet his father. He struggles to accept this son, who only speaks Korean, and resents that his son is not like the son he imagined having. In one poignant scene, Maurice and his son are shown trying to communicate and getting to know each other over a few shots of whiskey, using hand gestures to bridge the language divide. Chris later reminds Maurice that his attitudes about his son are learned behavior, and that the consolation is that he can unlearn it. Wise words for us all. This episode always brings tears to my eyes, like that Santa scene in Rudolph did as a child. It reminds me that we all have a thread to contribute to this magnificent holiday tapestry of culture and tradition.

I’ll close by including a Christmas poem written by my first husband, Brian, who passed away in 1998. In this year of Saturn and Jupiter forming a Christmas star, it feels appropriate. I think good words should live on. And as Chris in Northern Exposure said, “Christmas reveals itself to each of us in its own unique way, both the sacred and the secular. My Christmas Eve wish for you? May your dog talk.”

Catch a falling star
Place it on a Christmas tree
Let it shine from afar
for all the world to see
Let it shine
Let it shine


Catch a falling star
Place it in your hands
Feel the beating heart
Feel the breathing of the land
Let it shine
Let it shine


And somewhere in that star
Beats the warmth of a heart
And somewhere in that star
A candle flickers in the night
Burning love in the sky
And in our midst
In our souls
The sun eclipsed
It whispers the song
Of forgotten times
Needing no lines
A silent voice sings
And echoes through our hearts and souls


I feel the rhythm of the stars…shine on…shine on…
~Brian Sablatura