christmas tree night

Sunday night, MB and I purchased our — real! — Christmas tree and headed over to Target to get a tree stand. Mainly because we started having a debate about whether we actually still had our other tree stand. I thought we did. He thought not. So, fine. Off to Target we went.

Upstairs in the Christmas section, a very small dark-haired boy came wheeling a shopping cart around the corner towards us. His arms were stretched above his head in order to push the cart forward; that’s how little he was, but he seemed to be having no problem navigating the thing. The aisle was crammed with people choosing lights and paper and ornaments and all the other Christmas gew-gaws. As this little little boy rolled towards us, he started singing loudly, a warbly wanna-be opera singer:

O holy ni-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght!

It is the night of our dear Savior’s b-i-i-i-i-i-rth!

He just tilted his little head back and sang with total abandon, shaking those vowels out, as if no one was looking at him. But, of course, everyone was. Shoppers stole peeks at our pint-sized caroler, smiling, chuckling, poking their companions. But the boy just kept on singing. And, suddenly — I swear — the air itself was different. Right there, in that crowded, grouchy aisle. Some kind of calm washed over all of us. Some kind of pause. Some kind of lifting. A lady who may have been Gramma was with him but she didn’t shush him or discourage him. She just let him do what he wanted to do: push that cart and sing and sing about that holy night.

In the car on the way home, we grinned like goons and just generally felt like we were now better people somehow.

Then … back home, as MB worked and wiggled our tree into the shiny new tree stand, grunting all the while, he paused and announced grimly, “Well … here comes the swearing part of Christmas.”