Christmas comes with caroling and children’s cherished smiles,
colored lights and visitors who venture ‘cross the miles.
The morning of the twenty-fifth we eagerly await.
Presents wrapped in red and green we so anticipate.
For some, believing in the gift that oh so long ago
was born into a manger makes the heart intensely glow.
Yet you, like me, may pause each year as holidays approach
and touch within an emptiness as memories encroach.
The reason for the season we’re not able to embrace.
Instead of joy and merriment, with dread it is we face
the shopping and the baking, Christmas cards and letters too.
Even parties hold no fun when just a “gotta-do”.
How, we ask sincerely, can we know the season’s joy?
What’s the secret buried deep within each girl and boy?
No doubt it is the essence of the generous Spirit true
that lives within each child, man, and woman, in us too!
Giving always, ever, oh so freely to us all:
Spirit unencumbered is the reason we are called
to take time out each Christmas to remember once again
the child born in a manger: Love and Joy our next of kin.
By Jeanne Loehnis, 2007