You’ve seen or sent the Christmas cards. The wise men are crossing a desert under an oppressive dark sky but for one brilliant star directly above a warm glow nestled in the far distance. 

In my younger days I was much like the Wise Men, minus the wisdom and the colorful fashion sense. Christmas, which had always been a festive, but shallow experience, shattered my 16th year when Christmas Day was spent at Malcolm Grow USAF Hospital waiting for my dad to die. Christmas enveloped me in an endless, enormous, overwhelming, consuming darkness. Christmas was death, cold, pitch-black and empty. 

But for this tiny, warm light. The same light that drew the Wise Men. I was no more a Christian than they were. I had no gift to bring. I carried nothing but grief. But there was something about that holy night. Something about that Nativity Story. Something about that Child that drew my eyes towards him from far across my life’s desert. That beckoning light oriented my sight, when the rest of me wanted to drift no particular direction into oblivion. 

I wasn’t warmed, but I knew His warmth existed. I knew nothing about theology, but I knew “something Holy” — whatever that meant — kept me in wonder.

Our Hallway, The Kragh’s Family Room

I came to hate walking in the hallway of my childhood home. The dark wood paneling would seem to surround me and invite the consuming darkness. Was it the deep color of the wood? The confining space? The fact it was the hallway Dad went down when he took Mom back into their bedroom to share the devastating news that his cancer had returned with unstoppable vengeance? (The tears in my eyes say, “Yeah, that might be it.”)

I was not going to win any battle against the darkness in that house. Mom’s grief in the coming years and rage against anything of God made that impossible. But I tried. The single greatest act of rebellion in my life was putting up and lighting a Christmas tree against her expressed wishes. I plugged in the string of bulbs, the old fashioned kind that made a fire chief cringe. Light burst through the darkness. 

One year, after negotiations tough enough to make Trump cry “Uncle,” Mom agreed to allow me to put out her ceramic carolers. Three girls, three boys. I was the brown-haired one. I surrounded them with candles. The candles seemed to warm their little faces. And I, too, felt a hint of the warmth in the darkness, as I imagined them singing “O Holy Night.” Brief flickers of hope. The light was drawing closer. 

There must have been candles as well at the Lutheran church of my girlfriend, but I don’t really remember. What I do remember is her family’s embrace. Three Christmas seasons were spent in their home. I don’t know what would be more difficult, putting up with me or riding 9 months pregnant on a donkey, but put up with me they did. Mr. Kragh with his smile brighter than any tree and Mrs. Kragh (still) more beautiful. Sister Susan. Kathryn. Their warmth and love — and allowing me to help decorate, to help celebrate Christ’s birth — did more to save me than a thousand Christmas sermons. 

They were light in the darkness. The light within them standing with me.

The Candlelight Service

Decades have passed. Much has changed. My mother’s house is in the hands of an Air Force family. My own house is filled with candles. My wife is the one who has to put up with me. And the Child born in Bethlehem is now my boss.

Before he spoke of this Child who “will be born for us,” who will be named “Prince of Peace,” the prophet Isaiah set the stage and offered up a promise to us all. “There will be no gloom for those who walked in anguish.”

The people who walked in darkness
 have seen a great light;Those who lived in a land of deep darkness —
on them a light has shined. (Isaiah 9:1-2)

This weekend, I will stand with others in church as the Kragh’s once stood with me. I’ll be holding my own single, small white candle. From a single flame, candles will start being lit throughout the sanctuary. Each worshipper turning from one neighbor to the next. Gateway’s a cavernous place, holding some four thousand people. The points of light spreading in all directions will send my spirit soaring. My tears will drip like melting wax. And the reason is simple:

Darkness is still there. But it’s darkness defeated.

The 2015 Candlelight Service from Gateway Church