The village people have gathered under Christmas trees just about every year since 1930 or so, first when my father was a young boy growing up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, then in our family's home in Ambler, and now that he is gone, under our family tree here in Massachusetts. There are farmers and farm animals, a barn, a church, houses and vintage automobiles, a park and a lake, a policeman and a minister, fancy society members and working men and women. All hand-painted lead, all lovingly wrapped in tissue and stored away once the pine needles turn brown and the New Year comes in, all brought out and placed under spreading boughs of green, encircled by Lionel locomotive and tender, boxcars and caboose.
It was a big deal, I thought, when my father told me I was old enough to set the village up, and he turned this annual delight over to me. This year, it was my turn, and not without a considerable sense of, of what? -- loss, poignancy, satisfaction, wonder? -- I turned this tradition over to my two youngest children.
How much we turn over to our children in the hope that they might carry it forward! I suspect that more often than not we do this not overtly and with stated intention, it just happens as we live our lives side by side with them, as we model by what we do and say how we believe that life fully lived should be.
Maybe something to think about when we debate whether to go to that Christmas eve candlelight service....
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