The holy child

I suspect I've felt so emotional and sentimental this year because Tres is our last child, and still so tiny (but jowly!). I've had a different perspective of the nativity than in Christmases past: Where it used to be just a nice story about the birth of the Savior, now it hits me as the story of a baby -- an actual baby with fat cheeks, itty-bitty toes, fingers that curl tightly around his mother's hand reflexively, a lovely smell. It seems so much more real.

I wonder what Mary did to coax a first smile from him; are fake sneezes universal across time and culture? Did she brush her hair across his bare his tummy or pretend to nibble his ear?

I can't stop thinking of it in such specific terms. Christmas carols that mention the holy child make me a little misty-eyed this year; they never have before.

And of course I don't mean to denigrate that miraculous occasion, but it hits me more than ever now that every child is holy.









~RCH~