(Originally titled “IT’S CHRISTMAS IN BROOKLYN” and posted on the website Continuum…)

OH, SAINT NICK! Can you make all things right in the world this year? Can you make the world a better place? Can you bring us tidings of great joy? Can you bring us justice and peace? These are the things that we truly want. These are the things that our hearts yearn for. Forget the goodies and trinkets, so many soon forgotten baubles. Give us justice and peace.

Dear Saint Nick, this year we have seen tragedy as none of us ever expected. We have felt fear close to home, something so foreign to most of us. We have witnessed murder on an unbelievable scale. We have seen planes crashing and bodies falling from the sky, the end of the world on a bright September morning. Chaos and confusion. Death and destruction. Anguish and weeping. All on a bright September morning.

YOU KNOW, Saint Nick, I almost did not expect to see the Christmas lights this year. I was happy when I saw the earliest lights on a house in Brooklyn. And there YOU were! Right here in Brooklyn, so close to the scene of tragedy. We had to stop the car and take pictures. We did not know the people who lived in the house. We did not care. We needed to laugh and be as children again. Is that all adulthood really is, a constant struggle to be a child again? How refreshing it was to play the child and take pictures right here in Brooklyn! How we laughed until we nearly peed our pants when the owners came home and found us on their steps! The husband even volunteered to take a picture of us together, right here in Brooklyn! Christmas IS coming!

Saint Nick, I remember the excitement that I felt as a child as Christmas was approaching. We made chains of colored paper. Each link was a day until Christmas. How tempting it was to cut more than one link off each day in an attempt to shorten the time until you came. Did you like the cookies I left for you each year? Did you hear my anxious breathing every time that I heard a noise from downstairs as I lay in bed on Christmas Eve? Every sound was you. Do the children today feel that same excitement? Is their excitement carefree? Or is it somewhat stunted by the fear that seems to pervade our air today? Do they have visions of National Guardsmen dancing in their heads? Does their breathing betray anxiety every time a plane flies overhead? I feel badly for them. Can you make things better, Saint Nick? Can you help the children?

WHAT will Christmas be like this year? Will it be so commercial like all the other years? What will people really care about now? Which will prevail, a spirit of giving or a spirit of getting? Where will our hearts be? How will we love our neighbor? Will we finally love our neighbor? Or will it take further tragedy to wake us up to what truly matters in this world? Must all the world fall down upon us before we learn to love with all of our hearts?

SAINT NICK, I know that you are a good guy. You won’t let us down. We have believed in you since we were just a few years old, long before adulthood stifled our belief. Please tell us that our confidence was not misplaced. Please tell us that we can still believe. Please tell us that the world is not such a bad place after all. That is what we want to hear more than anything else right now. We want to believe. We need to believe. We need someone stronger than ourselves. Can you be him? We need someone who will not be shaken when buildings tumble down and when mountains fall into the sea. A super-hero will not satisfy. We need someone more like ourselves, someone better able to relate and feel the depths and intricacies of our humanness, someone otherworldly and yet so much like ourselves. We need…

Oh, look… There is a manger in front of that house.