December 1998

As the hard drive noisily grunts its way through another defrag, and I slide the mouse around on the screen to avoid the screen saver coming on, which I once again forgot to turn off before performing the defrag, the above line came to me, like an old friend. And it made me sit and wonder, what is it that we remember, and why?

Joy. Presents. Baby. Cradle. Angels. Shepherds.

Blood. Sweat. Agony. Pain. Suffering.

These are things that we remember.

I know, I started by invoking perhaps one of the best-known Christmas poems in the English language, The Night Before Christmas by C. Clement Moore, and I have ended up at suffering.

But isn't this the part of the Christmas story that we all too often forget?

Joseph and Mary, out in a desertscape that alternates between hot and dry to cold and dry, on a long journey, not knowing where they could stay when they got there, just knowing that they had to go.

Mary, 8 months pregnant, walking 70 some odd miles.

Joseph, not sure how his wife got pregnant, seeing visions at night and knowing, or at least hoping, this would all work out.

An innkeeper, never named in the sources, sweating his way through the pressures of another census. Romans underfoot everywhere.

A small, dark, manure-ridden, smelly, grimy cave.

The agony no male can ever experience.

This is what we forget.

A mother, some 30 odd years later, seeing her Son suffering, agonizing, bleeding, dying, emaciated, stretched and suspended between heaven and earth.

I often wonder if Mary maybe thought back to the incredible pain that she had went through herself when her firstborn Son was born.

But, in, through, and with the pain, is what we do remember of this seemingly incredible story, which to believe is life itself.

God, in a manger.

Angels, on a hillside.

Shepherds, the first recipients.

Magi, from the east.

Herod, in a rage.

Rachel, weeping without comfort.

Egypt, land of kings.

Nazareth, rural agrarian centre.

And that's what sets up the scene 30 years later.

Without which, the world would be a much worse place.

...Merry *Christ*mas to all, and to all, a good night.