Blog Your Blessings Sunday: Light

A long time ago I lived in Ireland in Belfast, County Antrim. I loved the winters there. They were damp and cold and oh so dark. I loved winters because being out in them made coming in to the fireside all the more appealing. Whether I came in to company or quiet, the fire was warm, the light soft, and the peace wonderful.

At the onset of winter, which begins the day after Halloween in Ireland, up would go the Christmas lights in the City Center. They glowed in the soft light of sometimes foggy evenings in that wonderful city full of old, dirty buildings that recalled a prosperity long gone. The Christmas lights were a source of joy, though. They really were Christmas in that city full of people who had no money in their pockets. Christmas really was about the light.

Walking around my own little neighborhood the other evening and taking in my neighbors' displays of light, I felt the same strange peace I often felt in Belfast even when the Troubles were intense. It seemed to me then and now that whatever the differences between neighbors, a characteristic we share is a reverence for the light--icicles, nets, fiber optic trees in the window, candles....The shape hardly matters.

That brought my thoughts to the legend of the candle in the window, a traditional Irish Christmas tradition that hearkens back to the first Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph couldn't find a room anywhere. The candle in the window is a sign of hospitality, a way of welcoming Mary and Joseph and any traveler at all who needs a warm place to stay. In this way, the candle is a reminder to be warm, to welcome others, to consider that God is in each of us and opening the door is always an act of opening the door to God.

An Irish custom, it does of course have its political overtones. In the days when it was illegal and dangerous to practice the Catholic faith in Ireland because of the Penal Laws, the candle in the window of Irish homes at Christmas also signaled traveling priests that this was a home where they would be welcome and where they could safely conduct the traditional Irish Catholic Christmas Mass.

I'm not a Catholic; nevertheless, this part of the tradition reminds me to remain steadfast in faith even in the most difficult of times. I think it's as nice to open the doors as it is to be inside. We are blessed with choices. Beautiful choices.

Blog Your Blessings