Called Out of Darkness Page 0,33

and skating, but I only remember that I loved these little universes and I thought this sister a wonderful person for having done this. Sisters were proprietary about their classrooms; each classroom had individual paintings and special touches, and sometimes even special collections of old books.

Even Christmas shopping was part of this festive and holy time of year. For me, it was a matter of roaming five-and-dime stores on Canal Street for the simple little presents I could afford. But I well remember the Christmas carols playing in every store I entered, and the gorgeous Christmas windows of the fine stores, Maison Blanche and D. H. Holmes.

It seems to me in retrospect that the department stores and the dime stores did an excellent job of extending the "sacred space" of Christmas in those days. And I sometimes wonder whether for people of no religion, this might have been the only sacred space they knew. When people rail now against the "commercial nature of Christmas," I'm always conflicted and unable to respond. Because I think those who would banish commercialism from the holiday fail to understand how precious and comforting the shop displays and music can be.

I recall a saturation at Christmastime. It seemed the whole world was celebrating the birth of Christ. We were singing hymns in the classroom, and in church. We heard them everywhere we went. It was surely my favorite religious season. I remember sitting in the living room of our house, by myself, with only the lights of the Christmas tree for illumination, and looking lovingly at our tiny Manger scene with the devoted Virgin, the tiny Child, and St. Joseph at His side. We always went to Midnight Mass on Christmas, and Midnight Mass was unfailingly magnificent. True, I do remember the presents and caring much too much about them, but what I remember more than anything else was the immensity of the feast, and the awesome sense of meaning that permeated every aspect of it. Yes, we wanted gifts, but we wanted to give gifts as well. There was nothing like Christmas. Not even Mardi Gras exceeded Christmas in importance, and my child's mind sought some understanding of the mystery I was experiencing in the haunting Celtic carols we sang.

In my later years, bleak years, years without God, there were two films shown on television every Christmas which became of remarkable importance to me. One was It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed; and the other was Scrooge, Dickens' Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim. Year after year I waited anxiously for these films, and sometimes they were the only Christmas films offered on national television, and I cannot help but wonder how important they must have been to people everywhere who were trying to regain that deep mystery of Christmas, in a world that no longer perhaps believed in it, or was determined to blot it out. Both films are as popular as ever today.

It's a Wonderful Life seems to be about American ambivalence to Christmas, and the desperate need to reaffirm the values of the season, no matter how bleak and impoverished the holiday season has become. As for Scrooge, he is Dickens' great and masterly judgment on the miser and swindler in each of us. In our house, when we gather for Christmas, we still watch both these films. It is a judgment on us as a nation that we seem unable to produce more films of this caliber and meaning, especially given the dazzling new cinematic resources at our command. Some years, Christmas simply doesn't happen on American television. And it doesn't happen in the movies either. This is a source of anxiety and disappointment to me. I fear our loss of sacred space and time. I dream of making beautiful and profound and magnificent Christmas films.

Back to childhood: as I grew older, somebody or some group of people in the church decided that we should observe the Advent season, and so the cribs could not be placed in the churches until Christmas Eve. Because in America "nothing is more over than Christmas," this meant that the cribs didn't command anybody's attention for very long. The radiant Christ Child came and went in a matter of a few days. This was a terrible loss. However, the celebration of Advent was an interesting idea in itself, involving an Advent wreath with four candles for the Sundays of Advent.

But I mourned the days when the Manger scenes went up early