Practicing Presence and Joy at Christmas

With a dinosaur in my pocket and a 3-year-old by my side, I set out in the late afternoon twilight on a walking tour of the neighborhood Christmas lights. I ended up with a half hour of pure delight. “Grandma, I LOVE this! It’s so beautiful!” He breathed, transfixed. Then unable to contain the emotion, dashed down the sidewalk singing at the top of his lungs, “Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!”

A word about the dinosaur in my pocket: It’s a plastic stegosaurus. My grandson holds a pterodactyl. His favorite game is anything involving me and these 2 dinosaurs. Even reading books frequently involves the dinosaurs. Being from the distant past, they have little background for most of what we’re reading. So they ask many questions. (It’s great fun to listen to a 3-year-old’s explanation of what an airplane or a stoplight or a telephone is!) So here we are, walking around the neighborhood, showing our dinosaurs Christmas lights.

“Grandma, where is your guy?”
I’ve tucked it into my pocket again so I can have my phone camera out for capturing the moment.

“Grandma, you have to show him!”
So we stand in front of a lighted house, holding our dinosaurs at the end of extended arms to give them a good view, squeaking to each other in tiny dinosaur voices, “Look! Isn’t it beautiful?” “Yes, it’s beautiful!”

The light-lined walk up to a front door beckons, and he’s halfway up before I can grab him. I remind him to stay on the public sidewalk. 

“Why?”

“Because that sidewalk belongs to the people in that house, and we don’t know them.”

“We could introduce ourselves!”

Somehow I dissuade him, though he isn’t entirely convinced. At the next house an inflated snowman stands on the front porch. The child tenses to take off again, so I wave and call out, “Hello, Mr. Snowman!” The child does the same. Then he says to me conspiratorially, “He’s not answering. He must not be real.” I whisper back, “What if that whole house is filled with a family of snowmen!” His eyes glitter as he breathes back, “Yeah!”

Now it’s time to start supper, so we turn toward home, but I’ve just spent 30 minutes really, fully present in each of them, present to the person next to me, present to beauty and wonder and a child's effervescent joy. May you find such moments in your holiday time—your own version of a Christmas light tour with a dinosaur in one hand and a 3-year-old in the other.