Why is Christmas Eve such a haunting time, filled with the persistence of undefinable magic? Most likely because it resurrects dormant memories and stirs raw sentiments that wouldn't dare intrude our lives at other times. The sweet mingles with the bitter, just as a tender universal kiss of remembrance lingers before life's final breath.
There are Christmas Eves from my past that I cherish, and many more that should be permanently expunged. In my present passage of life, in the blessed solitude of this comforting wilderness, I feel far older than my years and uncomfortably ill-prepared for the enormous strength required to endure future battles.
My life has been a never-ending battle, but so indeed have all our lives.
In the reverie of this magical night - my thoughts revert to times so distant that they seem to teeter as half-remembered dreams on the mists of horizons....fleeting fragments of what was and what will never be again......
I remember a flurry of Christmas Eves in Southern California - when life was deliciously young and energetic, when it brimmed with constant adventure and surges of purpose.
The concerts, the parties, the gathering of friends.....
performances of "The Nutcracker" ballet and Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"....
...when I was the piano accompanist for a singer at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the L.A. Music Center....and I met Dorothy Chandler at a Christmas Eve cocktail party afterwards......
And yet - despite the gold and glory - there was always the tarnish of my dark side.
I remember a Christmas Eve when I was the harpsichordist at a performance of Handel's "Messiah" and after the magnificent event I got drunk, wandered the all-too-familiar Hollywood streets and spent the night with a stranger (nothing new - - it was only one in an endless purgatory of such nights).
Even in the blissful warmth of success my feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing were monumental obstacles - - and my need to be desired and loved was profound.
I remember Christmas Eves shattered by my father's rage and marred with a terror so great that any semblance of holiday normalcy was completely expunged.....
..... Christmas stories of desperate struggles for raw survival - - when the problems with my father's maniacal violence were so intense that even the remote possibility of peace or of a caring God were non-existent.
I alternately prayed to God for mercy and cursed Him for the agonies I endured.
These are not grievances, they are merely memories on this haunted magical night.
In a later time of aimless wandering and quests for escape from myself, I remember a Christmas Eve somewhere in the sacred solitude of the Sangre de Christo Mountains of New Mexico (a place that my mother loved and once lived).
Midnight Mass in an ancient adobe church.....gentle snowflakes drifting in a frosted night. The deafening silence of the mountains, the air so crisp and dry that it intoxicates the senses.
Inside is a transitory respite of warmth and the false possibility of redemption. The altar is a great sea of candles shimmering in red cups, almost as burning reminders of all my sins.
I am immersed in this gentle sanctuary of peace and purified poetry.
The room wavers in the surrealistic glow of a quasi-symbolic dream:
Jesus in agony on a tarnished cross, an archaic array of gleaming silver, the smooth white marble of weeping saints frozen in eternal prayer....accompanied by the drone of ancient chants and time-worn recitations....
redemption, salvation, forgiveness
Forgiveness.
Candlelight flickering in windows of colored glass and in the eyes of this small congregation - - reflections of troubled nights and unquiet souls.
I eagerly absorb the warmth inside, but the sanctuary is only a temporary antidote.
The outside cold awaits me, in a swirling frenzy of ice-dusted snow and the great shroud of eternal darkness that shivers in the whispering wind.
